Is morality objective or subjective?

[Skepdick]

The main problem with IC here is that he doesn't understand what an infinite regress is. He conflates infinite regress based arguments with the idea that something could be eternal. He's making a fundamental category error. He thinks that math can rule out certain ontologies, which, in the end, is just silly, but also he fails to understand what infinite regress is.

I think you are projecting failure...

Theism solves infinite regress in an intuitive manner by embedding reality in a greater structure.

The natural numbers [0, +∞) are embedded in the number-line (-∞, +∞)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedding

And when you ask a Mathematician: And what of the infinitude of numbers - where did they come from? Oh they were always there.

Theism is Platonism for the masses.

[Will Bouwman]

Well, the "boneheads" always get the press, because the press loves extravagant and conflictual things, and finds more calm and measured folks boring. But that doesn't mean the "boneheads" are entirely wrong. One thing they're right about is that belief in human evolution (as opposed to mere lower-animal evolution), in particular, would have profound theological consequences, and would produce a true either/or decision.

So someone who believes that is a bonehead?

...there are creatures alive today having 'eyes' which are different transitional forms - limpets and nautilus spring to mind.

This also misunderstands the problem.

No it doesn't. A creature with a rudimentary eye will have an evolutionary advantage over totally blind competitors in many circumstances. That might be as simple as a single light sensitive molecule, the stimulation of which prompts a flight response. That creature gets to reproduce, while its blind neighbour gets eaten. The more sensitive to light, the greater the particular evolutionary advantage, so mutations that result in more light sensitive molecules are more likely to reproduce. Anyone not determined to stick their fingers in their ears and shout la la la can Google 'evolution of the eye' and discover just how well it is accounted for.

...this is a big discussion, and actually gets quite complex and technical. One has to know a lot of particulars about things like triadic symboisis, or irreducibly complex structures, or bee orchids or flagella, or minds, or DNA.

On the contrary, you have to not know a lot of particulars about actual research and actual evidence to insist that the biblical account of the diversity of life has any association with reality.

In truth, universal faith in Evolutionism is a religious sort of conviction, not one premised on the evidence. It's a hope for the future, and not at all a reality now.

That's religion for you.

I know a bit about Thomas Kuhn: https://philosophynow.org/issues/131/Th ... _1922-1996

Have you read him?

Yes; I wrote the article. Have you read it?

[Immanuel Can]

VA: That is your own 'supposition' ...

Sorry. You're still wrong...even if you are now wrong in blue text, and redundantly.

The point in blue is a reminder of the original point.

I didn't forget. It was just incorrect.

Again it is your supposition "he [non-theists] HAS to think that's the case"

No: that's what Atheism requires its logical adherents to believe.

On whose authority is that?

I'm not arguing based on authority. I'm pointing out what logic requires of them. (See? It's in blue, to remind you. )

I have already pointed out that many of them behave illogically, since they don't follow their Atheism to its logical conclusions, just as you are not doing. But that's their mistake. They've misunderstood, or refused to believe, what their own ideology requires them to believe.

The problem in this case is theists by their inherent nature cannot live with the idea of an infinite regress

No: the problem is that mathematics can't. There can be no such thing, and maths demonstrates it decisively. You may not like that, and may wish it weren't true...but you can test it yourself, and you'll find I'm right, if you can do a basic mathematical operation.

Perhaps if we are doing certain mathematics,

No...THE mathematics. The only real one there is.

You need to read up on the current research around the Kalaam Cosmological Argument. Then you'll actually have a chance of being right.

Any references for the current [within the last 2 years] research?

Why "within the last two years"? Do you think truth changes when time passes?

Here's a reference, from the foremost expert on the Kalam today -- shortened, simplified for a general audience, but still on point: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writing ... l-argument.

[Immanuel Can]

The main problem with IC here is that he doesn't understand what an infinite regress is.

I do, actually. And no, I don't confuse it with the eternality issue.

The claim is, "an infinitely regressing chain of causes is impossible." Every word in that claim is important. So if you're trying to represent my view honestly, you'll need that entire phrase. And it's verifiably a true claim, as mathematics confirms. And it can be confirmed by your own experimentation as well, if you use the regressing-number experiment I suggested earlier.

[Immanuel Can]

Well, the "boneheads" always get the press, because the press loves extravagant and conflictual things, and finds more calm and measured folks boring. But that doesn't mean the "boneheads" are entirely wrong. One thing they're right about is that belief in human evolution (as opposed to mere lower-animal evolution), in particular, would have profound theological consequences, and would produce a true either/or decision.

So someone who believes that is a bonehead?

It was your chosen term. I was merely accepting that there were such people around. But no, I meant only the extremists on both sides.

A creature with a rudimentary eye will have an evolutionary advantage over totally blind competitors in many circumstances.

But it will not, so long as that eye does not function. And at least in its preliminary stages (which the ever-expanding timeline of the Evolutionists assures us has to be at least thousands or millions of years long, in ever case), any alteration to an organism fails to produce an evolutionary advantage, and instead produces only a liability.

This is what I was pointing out with the flagellar case: if the flagellum is too short, or lacks one of the 42 distinct parts required to make it rotate, or has even one of these parts underdeveloped, then the flagellum is only a long anchor hanging off the back of the organism. It's not only not useful; it's a dramatic disadvantage. And Evolutionism tells us that such an organism must then be eliminated as "unfit."

So what the Evolutionist has to explain, and cannot, is how non-functioning and misfunctioning transitional stages that are necessary and unavoidable in order to produce the eventually-"advantageous" adaptation can persist for millions of years, in sheer defiance of the law of survival-of-the-fittest itself.

That's the challenge. It's not how to account for a functioning eye, or flagellum, or triadic symbiosis) but how to explain the necessary sequence of non-functional preliminary stages, that their story tells us had to happen in order to produce the billions of such that (literally, according to Evolutionism) have had to exist in order for time, chance and survival-of-the-fittest to weed out all the "unfit" stages.

That's a challenge Evolutionism simply cannot meet, by any present data. Where are these billions of non-functioning transitional forms, and how do they survive the weeding out that Evolutionism itself says must have been visited upon them?

In truth, universal faith in Evolutionism is a religious sort of conviction, not one premised on the evidence. It's a hope for the future, and not at all a reality now.

That's religion for you.

Yes! Quite so.

Evolutionism IS a kind of "religion." I agree.

I know a bit about Thomas Kuhn: https://philosophynow.org/issues/131/Th ... _1922-1996

Have you read him?

Yes; I wrote the article. Have you read it?

No, but I will. Thanks.

P.S. -- That's a good article. You write elegantly. You should write for PN more often. I see you've got some familiarity with Polanyi, too. Have you read Personal Knowledge? It's well worth it.

[Harbal]

That's religion for you.

Yes! Quite so.

Evolutionism IS a kind of "religion." I agree.

So are you saying that someone who just accepts evolution as a scientific truth, in the same way that he accepts numerous other scientific facts to be true, he is practicing a religion?

[Immanuel Can]

That's religion for you.

Yes! Quite so.

Evolutionism IS a kind of "religion." I agree.

So are you saying that someone who just accepts evolution as a scientific truth, in the same way that he accepts numerous other scientific facts to be true, he is practicing a religion?

But he doesn't "accept evolution in the same way that he accepts other scientific facts." Instead, he accepts Evolutonism as a creative narrative as Ernst Mayr, who has been called "one of the 20th Century's leading Evolutionists," himself freely admits. (I quoted him earlier, on that.)

That's more like the way COVID vaccines were "accepted" as "THE SCIENCE," (Mere mortals dare not question! ), and not at all like, say, gravitation, or fluid dynamics, or entropy are "accepted."

They're accepted by being tested: but Human Evolutionism is untestable. It's narrative-making, not "science." And we should be all the more suspicious, because the proposed narrative is exactly what Atheism most desires to be true, in order to sell it's own narrative.

[Harbal]

Yes! Quite so.

Evolutionism IS a kind of "religion." I agree.

So are you saying that someone who just accepts evolution as a scientific truth, in the same way that he accepts numerous other scientific facts to be true, he is practicing a religion?

But he doesn't "accept evolution in the same way that he accepts other scientific facts." Instead, he accepts Evolutonism as a creative narrative as Ernst Mayr, who has been called "one of the 20th Century's leading Evolutionists," himself freely admits. (I quoted him earlier, on that.)

That's more like the way COVID vaccines were "accepted" as "THE SCIENCE," (Mere mortals dare not question! ), and not at all like, say, gravitation, or fluid dynamics, or entropy are "accepted."

They're accepted by being tested: but Human Evolutionism is untestable. It's narrative-making, not "science." And we should be all the more suspicious, because the proposed narrative is exactly what Atheism most desires to be true, in order to sell it's own narrative.

Even if evolution were a totally false theory, to believe it true would not be comparable to religion; there is no resemblance whatsoever. It is merely an explanation, not a practice, or way of life. Believing that evolution is true does not require the believer to behave in a certain way, and it doesn't even prevent him from following an actual religion. By your account, forensic science and the study of history would also be religions.

Atheism is not a movement; it is merely an absence of a belief that God exists. There may be atheists who actively promote that view, and encourage others to adopt it, but they are not acting on behalf of atheism.

You have set yourself up as something of a know-it-all when it comes to Christianity -and most other religions, it seems- but at least you are a Christian, so you know what it is like to be a Christian. Rather than being content with that, however, you have also set yourself up as an authority on the experience of being an atheist; a subject on which you are woefully ignorant, or atrociously dishonest, and probably a mixture of both. It isn't that atheists most desire evolution to be true, it is that you desperately desire it not to be.

[Immanuel Can]

Even if evolution were a totally false theory, to believe it true would not be comparable to religion; there is no resemblance whatsoever.

Yep. It's the same.

It is merely an explanation, not a practice, or way of life.

Do you mean to suggest, then, that what a person believes about what they are doesn't have any downstream impact on what they choose to do? Don't you think that's just a little naive? Just about every case in history shows us otherwise.

By your account, forensic science and the study of history would also be religions.

Well, forensic science is a science, but not a certain one, in many cases. That's why courts don't rely exclusively on forensic evidence -- it can say certain things, but not others. For example, it can say that the deceased died of a head caved in by "a blunt object," but may not be able to reveal which "blunt object" it was, or who had it, or how the death actually came about. So it's a partial business, at best.

But history isn't a science. It can use elements of science, but it's really a form of narrative recomposition. That's what makes historiography such an important discipline: we continually have to revise our methods and question the historical narratives that are being offered to us, because they're not absolute. In fact, we know much more about recent history, but less as we fade back into the centuries. Our guesses become more approximate and uncertain as time recedes. And when we talk about composing a narrative about the origins of history itself, there isn't even a think skim of data to help us make the necessary connections -- we may have only things like helmets and arrow heads and ziggurats from ancient Babylon, but we have zero for "common ancestor."

Atheism is not a movement; it is merely an absence of a belief that God exists.

Not quite. Agnosticism is "absence of belief." Atheism is declaration that God (or gods) does not exist. And that's analytical, even in the names themselves.

You have set yourself up as something of a know-it-all...

Far from it. I just tell you what I know. I never claim to "know it all."

Rather than being content with that, however, you have also set yourself up as an authority on the experience of being an atheist;

Not the "experience." I've already pointed out that it is obviously as wide-ranging as it is irrational.

The meaning. The meaning is plain to anybody who can read. The evidence. The evidence is plain to anybody who listens to Atheists.

It's funny, you know -- you bridle at my suggestion that some who claim the name "Christian" don't deserve to do so; then you claim that the angry Atheists don't deserve to speak for Atheism. Which way do you really want it to be: the self-identification criterion, or something else? Because if it's self-identification, then the angry Atheists are your boys. But if they're not your boys, and not the real Atheists, then why are you upset if I say that some claimants to the name "Christian" are false?

It isn't that atheists most desire evolution to be true, it is that you desperately desire it not to be.

Desire's not really the issue. Truth is.

But Atheism cannot survive if there is any kind of God or gods in this universe. So Atheism needs Evolutionism desperately, and probablyl cannot survive its demise -- unless some alternate "naturalistic" explanation can be quickly substituted in. That's why the Atheists hated Nagel so much: not because he was taking away from them something they didn't need, but because they feared he was accidentally opening up space for Theism again. And they didn't want that. So they pilloried their own, rather than let that happen.

If they knew what was at stake, how come you don't?

[Peter Holmes]

I've been trying to follow this conversation - though I think its relevance for the nature of morality is tangential. And I wondered if there are any facts we can all agree on, as follows.

1 The evolution of life forms by means of genetic variation is a fact, demonstrated in laboratories. It does happen.

2 The theory (explanation) of the evolution of life forms by means of natural selection is one that has wide support, based on still-accruing scientific evidence. But it remains provisional, as do all natural science theories.

3 The theory of evolution has nothing to say about abiogenesis - the origin of life forms from inorganic matter.

4 There's no evidence (to my knowledge) for a non-natural cause for life itself, the evolution of life forms, or the origin of humans - though that does not mean non-natural causation is impossible.

5 Non-natural causation is an hypothesis awaiting evidence. As is natural abiogenesis - though there is some evidence for its possibility.

6 Our ancestors have invented gods and other supernatural beings in order to explain natural phenomena, such as the existence and nature of humans - though this does not mean such beings cannot exist.

If anyone thinks any of these claims is false, please explain why.

[Harbal]

It is merely an explanation, not a practice, or way of life.

Do you mean to suggest, then, that what a person believes about what they are doesn't have any downstream impact on what they choose to do? Don't you think that's just a little naive? Just about every case in history shows us otherwise.

I am me, a human being, one of many species of life on this planet, how I came to be here does not make any difference; why should it?

Atheism is not a movement; it is merely an absence of a belief that God exists.

Not quite. Agnosticism is "absence of belief." Atheism is declaration that God (or gods) does not exist. And that's analytical, even in the names themselves.

What about nontheist, then? "Agnostic" implies that the matter has been considered and no conclusion arrived at, whereas I don't have any belief in God, and regard the subject unworthy of consideration.

You have set yourself up as something of a know-it-all...

Far from it. I just tell you what I know. I never claim to "know it all."

Actually, you often claim to know things you don't, and you often make claims that you know to be untrue.

It's funny, you know -- you bridle at my suggestion that some who claim the name "Christian" don't deserve to do so; then you claim that the angry Atheists don't deserve to speak for Atheism. Which way do you really want it to be: the self-identification criterion, or something else? Because if it's self-identification, then the angry Atheists are your boys. But if they're not your boys, and not the real Atheists, then why are you upset if I say that some claimants to the name "Christian" are false?

That is purely a matter of definitions, and who has any authority to determine them. As far as I'm concerned, one who professes to be a devotee or follower of Christ is a Christian, and one who does not believe in the existence of God is an atheist. I find some of your so called Christian views quite extreme and unpalatable, but I don't consider you a representative of Christianity in general, and tar all Christians with the same brush. You, on the other hand, single out a few vocally aggressive atheists and declare them representative of all atheists.

It isn't that atheists most desire evolution to be true, it is that you desperately desire it not to be.

Desire's not really the issue. Truth is.

Well it's certainly the issue for me. I have nothing invested in trusting the truth of evolution, and if I ever had reason to become sceptical about it it would be no loss for me to disregard it. I would then be in a state of not knowing how we came to be here, but that wouldn't tempt me to take the ridiculous Bible account of creation any more seriously. You, on the other hand, attack, on principle, any aspect of science that challenges or undermines the Bible, where truth becomes an inconvenience to you, and most certainly not something to be found.

[Immanuel Can]

Actually, you often claim to know things you don't,

And you claim know what I can or can't possibly know...how?

Oh, my...that's funny.

It's funny, you know -- you bridle at my suggestion that some who claim the name "Christian" don't deserve to do so; then you claim that the angry Atheists don't deserve to speak for Atheism. Which way do you really want it to be: the self-identification criterion, or something else? Because if it's self-identification, then the angry Atheists are your boys. But if they're not your boys, and not the real Atheists, then why are you upset if I say that some claimants to the name "Christian" are false?

That is purely a matter of definitions, and who has any authority to determine them.

Great: well, analytically, "Atheist" is a composite made up of the Greek words "no" and "God." Atheist means, "No god". And analytically, "agnostic" means "ignorant" (in fact, the two words are just Greek and Latin, but the same word!)

So if it's a matter of definitions...

As far as I'm concerned, one who professes to be a devotee or follower of Christ is a Christian,

And one who says he's a woman is a woman, and a teenager who claims to be a cat is a cat, and a child who says, "I'm Batman" is Batman...

Really?

I have nothing invested in trusting the truth of evolution,

Correction: you are admitting that you don't know what you have invested in Evolutionism, because until now, you've probably never thought about it. But it's still invested there, because if there's any kind of God or gods, then Atheism's false...and agnosticism's unnecessary.

[iambiguous]

From Henry Staten's, Nietzsche's Voice:

Our moral beliefs did not fall from heaven and neither are there credentials we can flash like a badge to establish our moral probity. Consider all the rest of human history, including most of the planet at the present moment. What are we to say about this overwhelming spectacle of cruelty, stupidity and suffering? What stance is there for us to adopt with respect to history, what judgment can we pass on it?...Christianity attempted to recuperate the suffering of history by projecting a divine plan that assigns it a reason in the here and now and a recompense later, but liberalism is too humane to endorse this explanation. There is no explanation, only the brute fact. But the brute fact we are left with is even harder to stomach than the old explanation. So left liberalism packages it in a new narrative, a moral narrative according to which all those lives ground up in the machinery of history are assigned an intelligible role as victims of oppression and injustice...Only very recently is it possible for someone like Schutte [Ofelia Schutte, who in her book Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche Without Masks castigates Nietzsche for his authoritarianism.] to write as she does, with so much confidence that the valuations she assumes will be received as a matter of course by an academic audience, just as much as a Christian homilist writing for an audience of the pious. And only within the protective enclosure of this community of belief can there be any satisfaction in the performance of this speech act, any sense that anything worthwhile has been accomplished by this recitation. When this moral community by means of this recitation reassures itself of its belief, it comes aglow as the repository of the meaning of history, as the locus that one may occupy in order to view history and pass judgment on it without merely despairing and covering one's eyes and ears. There may not be any plan behind history, nor any way to make up their losses to the dead, but we can draw an invisible line of rectitude through history and in this way take power over it. Against the awesome 'Thus it was' of history we set an overawing majesty of 'Thus it ought to have been'.

But our liberalism is something that sprang up yesterday and could be gone tomorrow. The day before yesterday the Founding Fathers kept black slaves. What little sliver of light is this we occupy that despite its contingency, the frailty of its existence, enables us to illuminate all the past and perhaps the future as well? For we want to say that even though our community of belief may cease to exist, this would not effect the validity of those beliefs. The line of rectitude would still traverse history.

This is more or less the way it is, right? Every day we are confronted with each new numbing rendition of the Human Condition: cruelty, stupidity and suffering. And out in the world are all of these hundreds and hundreds of "moral communities" trying to make sense of it all...trying to put it all in perspective...trying to rationalize it all away in Meaning...in God...in Ideology...in Truth. In The Way. Theirs. That they all hopelessly conflict and contradict each other does not mean many, many additional refrains won't be joining the chorus of "rectitude" in the years to come. Long after we are all gone.

I like the honesty of Staten's words above. I like the way he refuses to pretend human interaction can be portrayed [realistically] in any other way. It is, after all, something we are not supposed to dwell on. This: that there is no more or less authentic way in which to live. There is only history unfolding in all of its brute naked facticity. A cauldron of cacophonous contingency. It simply is. And each of us, one by one, will die and then for eternity it will be as though we had never been born at all.

Unless, of course, Staten's "line of rectitude" above is merely one more self-delusion. But then how in the world would we go about determining that? How would we even begin to do this when we have no real way of figuring out the legitimacy of our own line?

Perhaps, when all is said and done, Schopenhauer wasn't pessimistic enough.

[Harbal]

Actually, you often claim to know things you don't,

And you claim know what I can or can't possibly know...how?

Oh, my...that's funny.

What is funny is that you don't seem to realise that your "bending" of the truth is common knowledge round here.

That is purely a matter of definitions, and who has any authority to determine them.

Great: well, analytically, "Atheist" is a composite made up of the Greek words "no" and "God." Atheist means, "No god". And analytically, "agnostic" means "ignorant" (in fact, the two words are just Greek and Latin, but the same word!)

So if it's a matter of definitions...

Don't be silly. The Greek and Latin origins of words are irrelevant, it is what they are generally understood to mean by the people who use them that determines what they do mean.

As far as I'm concerned, one who professes to be a devotee or follower of Christ is a Christian,

And one who says he's a woman is a woman, and a teenager who claims to be a cat is a cat, and a child who says, "I'm Batman" is Batman...

Really?

As far as I'm concerned, one who professes to be a devotee or follower of Christ is a Christian.

I have nothing invested in trusting the truth of evolution,

Correction: you are admitting that you don't know what you have invested in Evolutionism, because until now, you've probably never thought about it. But it's still invested there, because if there's any kind of God or gods, then Atheism's false...and agnosticism's unnecessary.

I realise the Bible is a big deal for you, but evolution is just a branch of science to me, and I don't look upon it any differently to any other branch. I believe it is correct because it makes sense to me, but if it stopped making sense, I would just disregard it. Your distortion of the facts and truth about evolution does concern me, but evolution itself has no importance to me.

[Immanuel Can]

Actually, you often claim to know things you don't,

And you claim know what I can or can't possibly know...how?

Oh, my...that's funny.

What is funny is that you don't seem to realise that your "bending" of the truth is common knowledge round here.

Oh? So they know more than you do?

That is purely a matter of definitions, and who has any authority to determine them.

Great: well, analytically, "Atheist" is a composite made up of the Greek words "no" and "God." Atheist means, "No god". And analytically, "agnostic" means "ignorant" (in fact, the two words are just Greek and Latin, but the same word!)

So if it's a matter of definitions...

Don't be silly. The Greek and Latin origins of words are irrelevant,...

Wow. Ever heard of a thing called "etymology"?

I have nothing invested in trusting the truth of evolution,

Correction: you are admitting that you don't know what you have invested in Evolutionism, because until now, you've probably never thought about it. But it's still invested there, because if there's any kind of God or gods, then Atheism's false...and agnosticism's unnecessary.

...evolution is just a branch of science to me,...

Well, you could at least examine your own worldview, and ask the question, "Would it be any different for me IF God existed?" That would be a good exercise. You might find that you have more invested in a blind faith in Evolutionism than you thought you did.