Is morality objective or subjective?

[Will Bouwman]

...why do you choose to be wrong about science?

Because I think people who include God in science are wrong.

Have you heard the expression Thought-terminating cliché?.

[Skepdick]

...why do you choose to be wrong about science?

Because I think people who include God in science are wrong.

Have you heard the expression Thought-terminating cliché?.

So you want to terminate thought when it comes to making moral determinations about what should and shouldn't be partt of science?

Gotcha.

[Will Bouwman]

So you want to terminate thought when it comes to making moral determinations about what should and shouldn't be partt of science?

Gotcha.

Why "moral"?

[Skepdick]

So you want to terminate thought when it comes to making moral determinations about what should and shouldn't be partt of science?

Gotcha.

Why "moral"?

Because it's normative, not descriptive.

[Peter Holmes]

If description is normative, then there's no distinction between the descriptive and the normative. So the description 'water is H2O' is merely the expression of a linguistic rule, as is 'homosexuality is morally wrong'.

Behold: mistaking what we say for the way things are. "There is no 'way things are' - there's only what we say about them. So if we say homosexuality is morally wrong, then it's a fact that homosexuality is morally wrong."

Oh yeah? Well, you and your moral objectivism can fuck off. Moron.

[Will Bouwman]

So you want to terminate thought when it comes to making moral determinations about what should and shouldn't be partt of science?

Gotcha.

Why "moral"?

Because it's normative, not descriptive.

True, my views are messy. On the one hand I'm full on Feyerabend and I like a good story. I have a lot of time for eccentrics and mavericks and have no wish for anyone to stop chasing a hunch, however bonkers. On the other hand, if there's nothing to see, what's the point of calling it science? There may be versions of the God hypothesis according to which something detectable and measurable is there to be detected and measured, but I haven't seen anything that I find compelling. Then there are versions of God which explicitly state that he is impervious to investigation. Ultimately, it's a fools errand trying to define science; as I say at the conclusion of that article:
Whatever anyone thinks should or shouldn’t qualify as science, the fact is that science is done by people. Some of those people are rationalists, some are empiricists, and some are pragmatists; and no matter what rules are imposed, people break them. https://philosophynow.org/issues/133/Ph ... _Millennia
Bit of a fool's errand defining moral too, but I wouldn't use it in the way you have.

[Skepdick]

There may be versions of the God hypothesis according to which something detectable and measurable is there to be detected and measured, but I haven't seen anything that I find compelling.

Yeah, well, the crux with all of this is what you might consider 'compelling'. It's very easy to go off the rails even with skepticism. All you need is an a priori rejection of the possibility of evidence for God and then no amount of evidence will move you off this position.

Even if God walked the Earth, knocked on your door and made you coffee and satisfied all of the tests you subjet him yo you'd insist you were hallucinating.

and no matter what rules are imposed, people break them.

This isn't that kind of situation at all. Nowhere in the rules does it say "no God in science".

And yet you choose to exclude the possibility a priori.

I can't tell you what science is, but I can tell you what isn't science... A priori rejection of the possibility of evidence isn't science.

[Immanuel Can]

I don't think that is the case. We learn about morality and moral values from our social group. Where else could it come from? We don't come into the world instinctively knowing that stealing is wrong, homosexuality is a "sin", or adultery is a bad thing. Every species of animal that lives socially has to have some system that modifies the behaviour of its group members towards each another, so each individual has to have the biological mechanism that induces it to cooperate within that system. We come with the software already installed, but the settings and preferences have to be set up by our environment before it can start functioning.

If that were the whole story, then it would be inconceivable...impossible, even...for you to ever have or adopt a moral stance that was different from that of your own social ethos. You would have no other place from which to launch any criticism of what your society does, or wants to do. You could never indict your own society as "unjust" in any way; and whatever they do, that's what you'd have to believe in.

Well I don't suppose it is the whole story; it is just the basic outline of how things seem to me. I don't feel compelled to believe in whatever my own society considers just, so I have not explained very well, or you have misinterpreted.

I'd be interested in getting your view right, if I've misinterpreted. The thing I don't understand well is very simple: if you are capable of judging some of your own society's pronouncements about morality, from where do you get the code or set of principles that enables you to do so? It clearly cannot be from society itself, since the society in question believes the opposite. It would be bizarre to say you're getting it from a different society, if you are yourself a product of your own, not that society -- it would make that totally arbitrary. And yet, I DO think you have a right to pass some reasonable judgment on your own society's morals, and to agree or disagree with them...but what would guide such a choice, and make it right?

And there are clear cases of such, of course. Nelson Mandela took exception to his own society, despite the morals being taught him by it, found them immoral and protested them. He was much praised for having done so. To what code could a person like Mandela refer, in order to be able to do such a thing, or to be right when he did?

It seems a fair question, does it not?

What do you mean by, "some moralities are bad for us"? Bad in what way?

Well, there are many such examples. Hitler's regime is an obvious one: he taught people its positively good for society to get rid of whole sets of people for the sake of its genetic hygiene. Or the Southerners who owned slaves defended it as essential to their way of life and as a basic right to own black folks. Or when a culture like that in Pakistan holds 'honour rape' to be the right way to redress a particular insult to one's family...all of these regard as highly morally right things which you and I recognize as grossly immoral. Would we not say that these alleged 'moralities' are bad for human beings? I think it would be pretty hard to argue they weren't.

I think it tends to be more of a communal delusion, consisting of similar individual delusions.

But delusions. That's the point.

If you say it is a delusion,...

I don't. But the moral subjectivist must. That's the point.

Well I certainly can't see what point God had in mind when he created us just so we could behave in various ways with various consequences.

Genuine personhood. Genuine volition. Genuine freedom. Genuine identity as an individual.

Without the power to make our own decision, we can never make a free decision to love God or not. We would be utterly incapable of genuine relationship, in fact. We'd be mere automata, robots, slaves, drones -- programmed entities that had no choices, no special identity, and no possibility of giving or receiving love, since they can never freely enter into any relationship at all.

If, as I suggest, God's endgame is genuine relationship, then the sine qua non of that is giving human beings their own volition...choice...freedom...individual identity and will. And for that to be genuine, each person must have a choice that counts, that makes a difference, and which is respected as to its result...even when that result is not what a loving God would choose. In the matter of relationships, both persons must freely engage. (We do have names for compelled "relationships," but none of them are savoury.)

That story must appeal to you, but I don't find it either inspiring or interesting. It leaves me wondering what the point of it all was, but not with enough curiosity to bother trying to figure it out.

And yet, here you are, thinking about it.

Think about it:

If God created us in order to have a relationship with him, it must have been purely for his own benefit, because if we had never been created, it would not have been here nor there to us whether there was a relationship, would it?

I can't understand that objection. It looks like a simple tautology to me: it seems to argue that if God hadn't created us, we wouldn't exist, so He would have no relation to us. And that would be so, but would not tell us anything new or important, would it? The same is true of anything.

Did he create us just to see what choices we would make?

The Bible says He already fully knows that. The point has to do with us, rather than with Him. He created us so that we could be free beings. We were created as free beings so we could freely choose whether or not we would relate to God. And there's nothing terribly strange about that.

After all, if you make a new friend or even a partner, is not the primary concern of your relationship whether both parties really want to be in the relationship? And if one does, but the other does not, is that a healthy relationship? Is it free? Is it just? Is it really a "relationship" at all, or is it some sort of enslavement arrangement?

A lot of us were obviously created with the potential for getting it wrong, and will regret it for the rest of eternity, so it would have been far better for us not to have been created in the first place, but we were never given that option.

That's actually true in one way. It would be better for a man not to be born than to end up in some states -- and astonishingly, such states as many men are willing to arrange for themselves, too. But the more difficult question is, "Just how great a good is genuine personhood?" How important is it that you and I are able to be the free and choosing people that we are? And following up on that, since no relationship is possible without the free participation of both parties in the relationship, how important is relationship? And following up on that, just how good is the relationship that is worth having some people risk being lost, just so that others may freely choose to have that relationship?

The Biblical answer, and the one I think is right is that the surpassing good of the human love relationship with God far outweighs even the negative implication that some men will freely choose a wretched end. And God, being very good, gives to all mankind the opportunity to enter into such a relationship with Him, based on what they know of Him, what He reveals to them individually of His person and nature; not on what they perhaps cannot know. However, what all men are given is the opportunity for response, not the compulsion to have to respond; so the choice remains genuinely within the capacity of the individual, and the individual remains free, and is genuinely an individual person, precisely because he has this free choice.

[Will Bouwman]

Even if God walked the Earth, knocked on your door and made you coffee and satisfied all of the tests you subjet him yo you'd insist you were hallucinating.

It depends how good the coffee is. I might insist that hallucination is still a possibility, and that there is more than one possible explanation for my experience, or I might be convinced. Who are you to say?

and no matter what rules are imposed, people break them.

This isn't that kind of situation at all. Nowhere in the rules does it say "no God in science".

There are no rules. That I, like others, have my own criteria doesn't make them rules.

And yet you choose to exclude the possibility a priori.

I can't tell you what science is, but I can tell you what isn't science... A priori rejection of the possibility of evidence isn't science.

I have not rejected the possibility of God. I have rejected the idea that a God which can be subject to observation and measurement, which according to my criteria are essential to science, is not the sort of God that some theists talk about.

[Immanuel Can]

Both those things I am still willing to entertain, despite what I considered honest searches. However modest God's expectations, He apparently wasn't impressed with my efforts.

I'm interested. What did you do, on your search?

The first time was when I was very young. On being told that Jesus was knocking at the door of my heart and that if I didn't open up I would go to hell, I tried very hard to let him in.

That's interesting.

What your teachers were telling you is not actually a Biblical idea at all. The Bible never speaks of a "door of the heart" or of Jesus "knocking" to come in. It's an unfortunate (but unfortunately fairly common) misreading of a very short passage in Revelation 3, one that actually has nothing whatsoever to do with personal salvation.

I understand why some people lapse into that errant trope: it's because they're trying to point out the necessity of making a personal choice to receive the offer of salvation, and they're looking for a picture or metaphor to describe to people who have never done it what it means to receive Christ. But it's misleading, and I'm not at all surprised you found the exercise unfulfilling. I would only say that the misapplication of Scripture ought not to cause you to suppose that the way actually outlined in Scripture is faulty in the way that invented trope is.

The Biblical view is that a person needs what's called a "metanoia" (to use the Greek word which cannot be exactly translated into English, but is approximately translated "repentance"). It means a "change of mind," in which one ceases to see oneself as the center of the universe (as we all naturally tend to do, automatically) and reorients oneself to a living and dynamic relationship with God, through faith in His work done in Jesus Christ. One determines to forsake one's selfish patterns of life, and to live henceforth in order to have the forgiveness and help of God in becoming what one was originally intented to be, somebody fit for friendship with God; and to cooperate with God in an ongoing process renewal by His Spirit.

But that's a little complicated to explain to a child; so I can understand why your early teachers lapsed into a kind of shorter type of explanation or picture -- with the unfortunate side effect of having encouraged you to look for a kind of experience the Bible does not teach is being offered, and consequently, with your natural disappointment in not finding it.

Later I read the Bible, hopeful that doing so might persuade me of something marvellous.

All 66 books? Or just a part of it? I'm not criticizing you if you haven't read it all, of course...I'm just curious as to what the range of your exposure was. I've read all 66, and more than once, too; but I don't anticipate that everybody's going to choose to do that, of course...especially if one is feeling a little disillusioned with the project at the time because one has been told to ancipate a kind of experience that just isn''t actually offered in it.

I hope that satisfies your interest.

Almost. Only my residual questions above remain.

My interest is in why you should call anything "Evolutionary propaganda". How does young Earth creationism better explain the issues I highlighted?

Long story. (I'm not a "young earther" by the way...I see no problem and no theological implications for positing a longer timeframe in regard to anything but the human case.)

To respond, though, the short explanation for why I speak of "Evolutionary propaganda" is that much of evolutionary theory has already proved to have been nothing but pure propaganda -- the monkey-to-man theory being one of the most glaring recent examples, but others being readily available as well. The whole history of Evolutionism turns out to be series of imaginary projections so faulty that continual (but never announced) revisions have been necessary for its proponents to keep it alive. And while Evolutionists always announce new "discoveries" with great fanfare and enthusiasm, you'll see that their admissions of wrong and their retractions are often not merely muted by totally absent -- so it seems that for Evolutionists, evolution is right in every matter in which it's right, but never wrong in any respect in which it's wrong. And it is owed praise and public credence whenever it speaks, but it's owed a complete pass and respectful silence whenever its speculations have gone off track.

...here's the latest discovery of a way in which Evolutionary propaganda has gone wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zignS602-f8

What that fails to acknowledge is that simpler organisms are found in lower strata,

Actually, you'll find that the fossil record is quite irregular in that way. There are cases in which not only are the fossils inverted, but also when a single fossil -- like, say, the fossil of a tree -- cuts across multiple strata that are supposed to have happened millions of years apart. The fossil record is far more ambiguous than Evolutionists will ever let you know; for, once again, they act as right when they're right, and not wrong when they're wrong. The fossils that seem to confirm the theory are celebrated, and the ones that undermine it are quietly shuffled off the scene.

And this is because there is much more than merely a "scientific theory" at stake in the Evolutionist case; there are such things as teleology, ethics, metaphysics, origins, careers, reputations, pedagogical credibility, and the authoritative voice of Scientism at stake as well. To be fair, though, it's very hard for any community of scientists to deal publicly with its mistakes...it would require great humility and a pure-hearted willingness to put truth ahead of reputation. I understand quite well why they simply would prefer not to mention them, especially when a truly grand theory, one on the scale of Evolutionism, takes a serious factual hit. It's far easier just to say, "Well, okay; that's a problem, but I'm sure the larger theory is still sound," and then proceed as before.

a single deluge would have mixed them all up.

Only if fossils can only be created one way...by the deluge. But we know that's not true; fossils can be created multiple ways, such as through gradual sedimentation as well as by instantaneous burial, and by regular flowing water or sand, in addition to a singular deluge. In all cases, the absence of oxygen and the ensuing pressure of sediment produce the condition for fossil formation.

So what we ought to expect is a mixed record -- some fossils that follow the expected pattern, and some, like the ones shown in the film, that simply do not. And that is exactly what the actual record shows...a mix of the two.

What it fails to explain is how enough material to compress organisms with the force of an hydraulic press, such that it forms solid rock, could have eroded in a few thousand years so that fossils can appear on the surface.

That's actually not a problem. It can happen multiple ways, too.

[Skepdick]

Even if God walked the Earth, knocked on your door and made you coffee and satisfied all of the tests you subjet him yo you'd insist you were hallucinating.

It depends how good the coffee is. I might insist that hallucination is still a possibility, and that there is more than one possible explanation for my experience, or I might be convinced. Who are you to say?

Given your a priori insistence that God has no place in science, I'd venture a guess that no coffee; or hallucination or any experience whatsoever would be good enough for you.

Unless you tell us how long that piece of string you call "good enough" is...

There are no rules. That I, like others, have my own criteria doesn't make them rules.

So people break the (imposed) rules that aren't there?!? OK! That makes sense.

And yet you choose to exclude the possibility a priori.

I can't tell you what science is, but I can tell you what isn't science... A priori rejection of the possibility of evidence isn't science.

I have not rejected the possibility of God. I have rejected the idea that a God which can be subject to observation and measurement, which according to my criteria are essential to science, is not the sort of God that some theists talk about.

So you have excluded the possibility of acquiring or detecting any evidence for God with any of your senses or instruments. And you have excluded that possibility a priori. Exacty as I said - no coffee or hallucination or any exprience whatsoever would be good enough.



If we aren't even talking about our feelings, emotions, imaginations and psychological percepts then what are we even talking about? It's completely outside the domain of the phenomenological.

[Peter Holmes]

When it comes to morality, the existence of any god is as irrelevant as the existence of an emperor or king. That an emperor or king thinks X is morally wrong is merely a matter of opinion - as is the opinion of a god. And gives a shit if that (invented) god created the universe and human beings with a purpose? The end.

[Harbal]

I don't feel compelled to believe in whatever my own society considers just, so I have not explained very well, or you have misinterpreted.

I'd be interested in getting your view right, if I've misinterpreted. The thing I don't understand well is very simple: if you are capable of judging some of your own society's pronouncements about morality, from where do you get the code or set of principles that enables you to do so?

In short, it comes down to a combination of empathy and sympathy, I suppose. If you are able to intuit how others might be affected by your actions, or the actions of others -including those of society in general- and it causes you concern if you think they will suffer in some way because of them, then you have a basis on which to make moral judgements. As you have already said, empathy can be misleading sometimes, but morality is not a science, is it?

I DO think you have a right to pass some reasonable judgment on your own society's morals, and to agree or disagree with them...but what would guide such a choice, and make it right?

And there are clear cases of such, of course. Nelson Mandela took exception to his own society, despite the morals being taught him by it, found them immoral and protested them. He was much praised for having done so. To what code could a person like Mandela refer, in order to be able to do such a thing, or to be right when he did?

It seems a fair question, does it not?

Mandela was a member of a class of people that were subject to extreme social injustice, and I suppose he was motivated to a large extent by his personal experience of being treated unfairly. That seems the obvious answer, but I'm not so well acquainted with the details of Mandela's activities.

What do you mean by, "some moralities are bad for us"? Bad in what way?

Well, there are many such examples. Hitler's regime is an obvious one: he taught people its positively good for society to get rid of whole sets of people for the sake of its genetic hygiene. Or the Southerners who owned slaves defended it as essential to their way of life and as a basic right to own black folks.

Well those examples were certainly bad for Jews and black folks, but not so bad for the Nazis and plantation owners, which is why I questioned what you meant by "bad for us". My guess is that Hitler believed he had moral justification in eradicating the Jews, and that the slave owners did not even see a moral issue in enslaving black people. You and I might think those things were terribly wrong, but the perpetrators of them obviously did not, and the morality in both cases seems to have something of a biblical flavour to it, don't you think?

If you say it is a delusion,...

I don't. But the moral subjectivist must. That's the point.

I think they would say it is a personal attitude or opinion, or something like that. I don't agree that they are obliged to see it as delusion.

That story must appeal to you, but I don't find it either inspiring or interesting. It leaves me wondering what the point of it all was, but not with enough curiosity to bother trying to figure it out.

And yet, here you are, thinking about it.

But only for as long as it took me to type it out.

Did he create us just to see what choices we would make?

The Bible says He already fully knows that. The point has to do with us, rather than with Him.

But there need not have been any us, that is my point, so whatever he did, he did for himself.

He created us so that we could be free beings.

To not exist is the ultimate freedom, so I would say it was a step backwards on his part.

We were created as free beings so we could freely choose whether or not we would relate to God. And there's nothing terribly strange about that.

So we were brought into existence in order to be judged?

After all, if you make a new friend or even a partner, is not the primary concern of your relationship whether both parties really want to be in the relationship? And if one does, but the other does not, is that a healthy relationship?

But when someone doesn't want to be in a relationship with me, I don't arrange for there to be "consequences" for them.

A lot of us were obviously created with the potential for getting it wrong, and will regret it for the rest of eternity, so it would have been far better for us not to have been created in the first place, but we were never given that option.

That's actually true in one way. It would be better for a man not to be born than to end up in some states -- and astonishingly, such states as many men are willing to arrange for themselves, too. But the more difficult question is, "Just how great a good is genuine personhood?"

Personhood is neither good nor bad. The human psyche might perceive it as good, but only because God designed us to experience it that way. I daresay he used the same principle when he created bananas and then gave us a taste for them.

The Biblical answer, and the one I think is right is that the surpassing good of the human love relationship with God far outweighs even the negative implication that some men will freely choose a wretched end. And God, being very good, gives to all mankind the opportunity to enter into such a relationship with Him, based on what they know of Him, what He reveals to them individually of His person and nature; not on what they perhaps cannot know. However, what all men are given is the opportunity for response, not the compulsion to have to respond; so the choice remains genuinely within the capacity of the individual, and the individual remains free, and is genuinely an individual person, precisely because he has this free choice.

You say this to me knowing what I think of the Bible, and that I haven't even the slightest of reservations about dismissing the idea of the existence of God. Why?

[Immanuel Can]

I don't feel compelled to believe in whatever my own society considers just, so I have not explained very well, or you have misinterpreted.

I'd be interested in getting your view right, if I've misinterpreted. The thing I don't understand well is very simple: if you are capable of judging some of your own society's pronouncements about morality, from where do you get the code or set of principles that enables you to do so?

In short, it comes down to a combination of empathy and sympathy, I suppose. If you are able to intuit how others might be affected by your actions, or the actions of others -including those of society in general- and it causes you concern if you think they will suffer in some way because of them, then you have a basis on which to make moral judgements. As you have already said, empathy can be misleading sometimes, but morality is not a science, is it?

No. But how do we know that empathy is the right principle? I mean, all empathy really means is imagining that whatever I think somebody else should be feeling is what they are feeling, and then (presumably) feeling some duty (derived from nothing more than that feeling, presumably) to...to do what?

Why do I owe somebody else something, merely because I have a sorry feeling about them? Why not assume instead, as Atheists must logically assume, that my feelings are interrupting my commitment to reality, which is governed by laws like "survival of the fittest'? That poor sap I feel sorry for is one of the "unfit." I am one of the "fit." If I help him, I'm working against basic evolutionary principles. But even if I do, what makes me right to do so, anymore than the guy who just lets him die in a ditch?

Even empathy needs an explanation, or it can be dismissed as an errant feeling...maybe even just a case of cowardice on my part, because I'm afraid to be the ubermensch who will do what he has to do to honour his own "will to power" and get ahead.

I'm not saying I believe Nietzsche about that. But I am saying that an Atheist would need a reason not to believe that Nietzsche was actually right in the logical consequences he mapped out from his own Atheism.

I DO think you have a right to pass some reasonable judgment on your own society's morals, and to agree or disagree with them...but what would guide such a choice, and make it right?

And there are clear cases of such, of course. Nelson Mandela took exception to his own society, despite the morals being taught him by it, found them immoral and protested them. He was much praised for having done so. To what code could a person like Mandela refer, in order to be able to do such a thing, or to be right when he did?

It seems a fair question, does it not?

Mandela was a member of a class of people that were subject to extreme social injustice,

"Social injustice" isn't a self-evident thing. There are cultures where there are castes and levels of society...and not a few such cultures, either. In these, women do not deserve the same rights as men, or children the rights of adults, or people born at a worker level the same as those born to the elites, and so on. In all these cultures, "justice" means that the ditch diggers stay ditch diggers, the women stay in the kitchen, the children can be killed or traded, slaves can be owned and exchanged, rape is what an offending family deserves to get, the tribe next door deserves death...and so on. Mandela's own culture was an Aparteid one. He was taught to understand himself as part of a deservedly-lower minority; and everything in his society tended to that.

How did he know he was worth more? How do you know he was, if you think he was?

My guess is that Hitler believed he had moral justification in eradicating the Jews, and that the slave owners did not even see a moral issue in enslaving black people. You and I might think those things were terribly wrong, but the perpetrators of them obviously did not, and the morality in both cases seems to have something of a biblical flavour to it, don't you think?

In neither case, actuallly. But I don't know how far you want to investigate that; I can certainly prove that's wrong.

The more important point is that whether the perps believed they were wrong for what they did, we believe they were. And we need reason to say so. Because there are still things in our societies that we deem "unjust." And if we do, we must be accessing some outside-of-culture frame of reference for our saying so.

Otherwise, Hitler was right to kill Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, etc. in Germany. And Stalin was right to murder Kulaks in Russia. And Mandela was wrong to contradict his South African society. So social morality of that kind has to be judged by something that transcends the merely social.

What have you got for that?

If you say it is a delusion,...

I don't. But the moral subjectivist must. That's the point.

I think they would say it is a personal attitude or opinion, or something like that.

That won't make it right. How many "opinions" of contradictory kinds get thrown up here? There's nothing magical about the having of an opinion that makes it a true or right opinion.

Lacking any objective referent, opinions about a thing are a delusion. You might say that, say, Nelson Mandela was "right" to do what he did, but its not at all clear that you have any warrant to say so...for you must assume it's only a kind of personal feeling you happen to have...an empathy, perhaps; but that he can't have been really right. So it's a delusion. He was seen as wrong by the affirmers of Aparteid, for sure; and why your opinion ought to prevail over their would need to be shown.

Did he create us just to see what choices we would make?

The Bible says He already fully knows that. The point has to do with us, rather than with Him.

But there need not have been any us, that is my point, so whatever he did, he did for himself.

In a sense, yes. Everything God does is according to His worth and glory. But why not? It's one of the perks of being God and being perfect, I would say.

He created us so that we could be free beings.

To not exist is the ultimate freedom,

How is not existing a "freedom"? It's the complete absence of any options at all, really. It would rather seem to be the ultimate in...nothing.

We were created as free beings so we could freely choose whether or not we would relate to God. And there's nothing terribly strange about that.

So we were brought into existence in order to be judged?

Find the word "judged" in that line, if you can.

After all, if you make a new friend or even a partner, is not the primary concern of your relationship whether both parties really want to be in the relationship? And if one does, but the other does not, is that a healthy relationship?

But when someone doesn't want to be in a relationship with me, I don't arrange for there to be "consequences" for them.

Well, there are two types of "consequences": arranged ones, and natural ones. If a person has freedom, the natural consequence of that is that he can really choose...the good or the bad. But the natural consequences of evil are alienation from the Ultimate Good. That's not an "arrangement" so much as it is the automatic outcome of a very bad choice.

To put it as C.S. Lewis did,

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done. ' All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell."

A lot of us were obviously created with the potential for getting it wrong, and will regret it for the rest of eternity, so it would have been far better for us not to have been created in the first place, but we were never given that option.

That's actually true in one way. It would be better for a man not to be born than to end up in some states -- and astonishingly, such states as many men are willing to arrange for themselves, too. But the more difficult question is, "Just how great a good is genuine personhood?"

Personhood is neither good nor bad.

Oh, I disagree. It's the sine qua non of relationship. And to be in relationship, particularly one of love, is just about the highest good any of us ever knows.

The Biblical answer, and the one I think is right is that the surpassing good of the human love relationship with God far outweighs even the negative implication that some men will freely choose a wretched end. And God, being very good, gives to all mankind the opportunity to enter into such a relationship with Him, based on what they know of Him, what He reveals to them individually of His person and nature; not on what they perhaps cannot know. However, what all men are given is the opportunity for response, not the compulsion to have to respond; so the choice remains genuinely within the capacity of the individual, and the individual remains free, and is genuinely an individual person, precisely because he has this free choice.

You say this to me knowing what I think of the Bible, and that I haven't even the slightest of reservations about dismissing the idea of the existence of God. Why?

Two reasons, one inexplicable and the other explicable.

One reason is that I happen to like you. That's a bit inexplicable, maybe , but I actually find you rather engaging and interesting as a person, even just by email. And you're very funny sometimes, too. But that's just a personal reason.

The ultimate reason is this: it's true. And things that are true remain true, regardless of what people believe about them. One can only hurt oneself by resisting the truth...one cannot hurt the truth. And as a Christian, it would be consummately unloving and selfish for me to tell you about the truth that could stand to bring you into the relationship of ultimate value and blessing, the one with God.

Of course, I cannot arrange that. You're free, and you have a right to choose, and I would never stand in the way of that, even if I could. But I can, at least, tell you the truth as I know it, and I can give you the best opportunity to make the best choice. There, my power simply ends.

[Harbal]

I'd be interested in getting your view right, if I've misinterpreted. The thing I don't understand well is very simple: if you are capable of judging some of your own society's pronouncements about morality, from where do you get the code or set of principles that enables you to do so?

In short, it comes down to a combination of empathy and sympathy, I suppose. If you are able to intuit how others might be affected by your actions, or the actions of others -including those of society in general- and it causes you concern if you think they will suffer in some way because of them, then you have a basis on which to make moral judgements. As you have already said, empathy can be misleading sometimes, but morality is not a science, is it?

No. But how do we know that empathy is the right principle? I mean, all empathy really means is imagining that whatever I think somebody else should be feeling is what they are feeling, and then (presumably) feeling some duty (derived from nothing more than that feeling, presumably) to...to do what?

I don't know what I can add to my above account to make you understand if it still leaves you feeling you need to ask these questions.

Why do I owe somebody else something, merely because I have a sorry feeling about them? Why not assume instead, as Atheists must logically assume, that my feelings are interrupting my commitment to reality, which is governed by laws like "survival of the fittest'?

Evolution theory is not a religion; I can believe in the truth of it without turning to it to inform me how to live my life. As an atheist, I am free to follow my own instincts and feelings. If my emotions urge me to help somebody, why would I ignore them when I know I would end up feeling bad about it? I really think you are being disingenuous; you are a human being just as I am, and understand perfectly well what I am talking about.

That poor sap I feel sorry for is one of the "unfit." I am one of the "fit." If I help him, I'm working against basic evolutionary principles.

What if I am a very poorly educated atheist and know nothing about evolutionary principles? Is it okay to help the poor sap then?

Even empathy needs an explanation,

Empathy is just a sense of being able to imagine yourself in someone else's position, and we don't usually demand an explanation before we allow ourselves to sense something.

I'm not saying I believe Nietzsche about that. But I am saying that an Atheist would need a reason not to believe that Nietzsche was actually right in the logical consequences he mapped out from his own Atheism.

It may be remiss of me, but I have never stopped to think about Nietzsche before rushing to the aid of someone in distress.

"Social injustice" isn't a self-evident thing. There are cultures where there are castes and levels of society...and not a few such cultures, either. In these, women do not deserve the same rights as men, or children the rights of adults, or people born at a worker level the same as those born to the elites, and so on. In all these cultures, "justice" means that the ditch diggers stay ditch diggers, the women stay in the kitchen, the children can be killed or traded, slaves can be owned and exchanged, rape is what an offending family deserves to get, the tribe next door deserves death...and so on. Mandela's own culture was an Aparteid one. He was taught to understand himself as part of a deservedly-lower minority; and everything in his society tended to that.

How did he know he was worth more? How do you know he was, if you think he was?

When you are being badly mistreated, you more tend to think, "I don't like this", than, "I'm worth more than this".

The more important point is that whether the perps believed they were wrong for what they did, we believe they were. And we need reason to say so. Because there are still things in our societies that we deem "unjust." And if we do, we must be accessing some outside-of-culture frame of reference for our saying so.

Otherwise, Hitler was right to kill Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, etc. in Germany. And Stalin was right to murder Kulaks in Russia. And Mandela was wrong to contradict his South African society. So social morality of that kind has to be judged by something that transcends the merely social.

What have you got for that?

I only have my own sense of right and wrong. Sorry.

That won't make it right. How many "opinions" of contradictory kinds get thrown up here? There's nothing magical about the having of an opinion that makes it a true or right opinion.

Exactly, there is nothing magical, or mystical, about morality. Nothing objectively right or wrong about it; it is only right or wrong according to a given moral standpoint.

Lacking any objective referent, opinions about a thing are a delusion.

No, they are opinions. When you come to redecorate, I'm sure you don't say, "well, I would prefer the bedroom in blue, but I know I'm only deluding myself". Or perhaps you do say that.

You might say that, say, Nelson Mandela was "right" to do what he did, but its not at all clear that you have any warrant to say so...for you must assume it's only a kind of personal feeling you happen to have...an empathy, perhaps;

Yes, I would just be expressing my opinion.

How is not existing a "freedom"? It's the complete absence of any options at all, really. It would rather seem to be the ultimate in...nothing.

To not exist is total freedom from pain and suffering, and as for the good things in life, you are completely unaware of what you are missing. Win, win.

But when someone doesn't want to be in a relationship with me, I don't arrange for there to be "consequences" for them.

Well, there are two types of "consequences": arranged ones, and natural ones. If a person has freedom, the natural consequence of that is that he can really choose...the good or the bad. But the natural consequences of evil are alienation from the Ultimate Good. That's not an "arrangement" so much as it is the automatic outcome of a very bad choice.

Okay then: When someone doesn't want to be in a relationship with me, I don't see to it that they become the victim of an automatic outcome.

I happen to like you. That's a bit inexplicable, maybe

Don't try to explain it; just accept it.