Is morality objective or subjective?

[Dontaskme]

Evolutionism's blind, deaf, dumb and morally indifferent to whatever happens.

Sounds just like IC's God.

Oh, but hang on a minute, there's Judgement Day, that very serious mysterious force to be reckoned with day, that has never, as yet, so far, as we can know or see, or experience, ever seen the light of day.

It's a bit like death, no person that died, ever came back to report to the living that they had in fact died. Or that they had met their maker, creator, and that it sent them to heaven or it sent them to hell.

I guess there are just some things we will NEVER know...and yet something does know according to IC.

IC the one who can never know what happens after death, and yet confidently knows the one who does know what happens after death. I mean wow, how does that work. How does this one that knows what happens after death even communicate with someone who has died, who no longer knows or is aware of the knowledge of itself anymore. How can that dead one be communicated with by the one who does know what happens after death according to IC's logic that this one is able to exist in a place where people are dead. It's like how can a something that does know what happens after death even expect to communicate and judge dead people about their deeds and actions while they were alive.

[Immanuel Can]

Do you want to speak about the kind of Catholicism you have, or do you view that as a private matter?

I don't see why inherently there should be anything private about it, so I'll confess to once, very long ago, having been a Roman Catholic...

Well, thank you for sharing that. It's interesting, and helpful to my understanding of your perspective. I admire your frankness.

[Immanuel Can]

You are not a cat. Cats clearly don't "know" in the way human beings can.

Humans and cats are concepts known, by the only knowing there is which is consciousness.

I'm sorry...this sort of garbled syntax leaves me baffled. I have no idea what you're trying to say.

But I'm not going to fight with you, so have a nice day.

[Immanuel Can]

...it's not clear to me that any of what you're saying has anything to do with logic. After all, the right comparison is mathematics.

Well, now you're moving the goalposts.

I don't understand that objection. What "goalposts," and how "moving"?

And logic isn't an ideological thing. It will happily serve any "user," like maths will. It is required by both the Theist and the skeptic in equal measure

The ideology comes with your choice of premise.

Again, I don't understand the objection. It's perfectly obvious that logic is just a method, which, like maths, is simply "a handle to fit all pots," rather than a particular ideological orientation. Logic is what the Theist uses to make his case, but also the thing that the skeptic uses to make his: and it's the same tool you're attempting to employ right now, to convince me that logic isn't a universal tool.

You have chosen to believe that God is real, an hypothesis for which there is no direct evidence. You have also chosen to believe that an iron age account of creation is accurate, despite the overwhelming evidence that it is not. With those premises in place, it is easy to reach the conclusion that you will live forever as a favourite of the "Supreme Being". You know that's why you chose them, but cannot admit it because fear of a meaningless existence and death are not good reasons to believe anything. So instead you have put a lot of energy in supporting beliefs that have no foundations of their own.

I'm sorry...I'm always amused when people who've never met me tell me they know what my history and motives are.

I think I know what you're trying to say. You're trying to say that you suspect that I might be a person like that. But I'm sorry to disappoint, in that regard: I'm actually somebody who became a Theist as a result of the convergence of several factors, among which were the failure of secular philosophy to explain evil, a personal search through the alternatives, and a personal experience with Jesus Christ, all in my university years. So the whole, "you're only believing this because you're afraid / indoctrinated / culturally propagandized / not aware of the (alleged) contrary evidence, and so on just rings hollow with me.

I'm not at all what you imagine I am. So I can't say that this description troubles me much.

The good news for you is that, as most atheists will concede, perhaps there is a God.

If they do, they've stopped being Atheists at all. One might call them "agnostics," but their Atheism has become quite suspect.

Where you come off the rails though, is projecting your ideological motivation and hard work onto "Atheists" and "Evolutionists". You believe they work as hard as you to prove that God doesn't exist. No doubt there's a few on the lunatic fringe.

Hmmm...maybe there's not as few as you imagine. I find that quite a lot of the major proponents of that ideology are quite frank about their antipathy to God. And I would suggest that my claim is simply a reversed form of the sort of accusation Atheists routinely launch against Christians: they say, "You only believe in God because you want there to be a God," to which the Christian can rightly rejoin, "You only believe there's not a God because you want there not to be a God." And if the former is true in any cases, then it's not hard to imagine that the latter can be true as well.

...depending on the available premises; because every argument -- even arguments trying to doubt logic -- depend on logic for their coherence and success.

The choice of "available premises" is unlimited; people make them up all the time. The hard of thinking are apt to confuse validity and soundness and believe their conclusions.

But logic is a procedure, not a set of particular premises. One can plug any premises at all into the logic "equation," and one will get a formally-valid conclusion: as you indicate, it still might not turn out to be a truthful one, if the premises themselves are faulty; but if they're not, then it's guaranteed to be a sound conclusion -- both valid and true. (And yes, I do know the formal terminology.)

...the only evidence for any God is words.

Well, that's decidedly not true. Even a reasonably-informed skeptic knows that. The whole of Creation itself is clear evidence of God...

Creation is evidence for any hypothesis that is consistent with it.

I don't think it is. I recognize that people who are already disposed not to see the hand of God in it can perform sufficient contortions to avoid seeing it, and then claim it's not there; that's what I think they're really doing. There are some things that are just so glaringly obvious about this world that only some really extraordinary mental gymnastics can get one not to at least suspect that God is behind it all; but I do recognize that it is possible for people to do those gymnastics.

And I think there's actually a good theological explanation for why that's so, having to do with allowing the free will of mankind. So I don't deny that it's quite possible for a person to work himself into a state in which he doesn't see the evidence as evidence at all anymore. But I think that's not the natural or most obvious position, for sure.

as is the rationality of the universe and science itself, and mathematics...

You really are a have your cake and eat it kinda guy, aren't you? On the one hand you claim the miracle of the resurrection is the sort of irrational behaviour that is evidence; on the other the fact that there isn't more irrationality is also evidence. That the universe behaves predictably, that the same conditions produce the same results, is exactly what you would expect if no God were twiddling the knobs.

Well, you have to think of what is claimed by the word "miracle." It's not the claim that, under most circumstances, reality doesn't simply obey ordinary scientific regularities or "laws." It's the claim that the Creator can, when He wishes to, act upon the world Himself...that the scientific regularities are subject to the Divine Will. And framed like that, there's nothing about that that the skeptic can even protest: he and the believer in miracles are agreeing that most of the time the scientific regularities apply; and the skeptic has to admit he doesn't know what's possible whenever God Himself chooses to intervene. He is just gratuitously choosing to believe that there's no God to do that.

So they're really only arguing over historical fact. One is saying, "God parted the Red Sea," and the other is saying, "I don't think he did." But they're not arguing that the laws of hydrodynamics can tell them anything about that, because both of them believe fully in hydrodynamics...which is what makes the case, by definition, a "miracle." If hydodynamics did not ordinarily apply, there would be no just claim of a "miracle" at all.

...and the human psyche...

What about it does God explain that evolution can't?

Lots. Consciousness, for none thing. But volition, identity, morality...lots of stuff.

...and all of that is without taking into account anything that includes any direct or any written revelation at all.

Whatever experience you have had that you attribute to God revealing himself to you, I am quite certain there are alternative explanations.

From the outside? No doubt. But my experience is different.

Could I be wrong? Plausibly...from your perspective...I admit it. And even from my own, I suppose I could tell myself I'm deluded. But there comes a point in human experience when denying the experience starts to take far too much energy, and it becomes more of an effort to fight the truth than to begin to admit it to oneself.

I don't offer that to you as evidence you can use. I know you have to have your own experience. But I merely point out that I understand your perspective as an outsider on that, and still don't feel particularly perturbed by the suggestion, because of my own perspective as somebody who has a quite a different experience and knowledge of the thing.

Your conviction that we are all the same simply isn't true.

I've never said we are "all the same." I've said what Darwin said, which is that we are "of the same species," which miraculously always seems to be at exactly the same stage of alleged "evolving."

The fact that we have different genes is precisely the claim of evolution.

Actually, Darwin had absolutely no knowledge about genes, and premised the whole theory on the assumption that things that look somewhat alike must be related. That's exactly how the monkey-to-man story, which is so embarassing for the history of the movement, got started in the first place. If Darwin had understood genetics, he never would have proposed it -- at least not in the flawed form he did.

There are many genetic mutations that make foetuses unviable, survival to adulthood unlikely and reproductive success difficult or impossible.

Foetal development isn't "evolution," of course. The matter of "species" is not thrown off by outliers who happen to be infertile. A dog is still a dog, whether it's been neutered or not, whether by nature or by the vet. That's another thing genetics confirms to us.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Oh, but hang on a minute, there's Judgement Day, that very serious mysterious force to be reckoned with day, that has never, as yet, so far, as we can know or see, or experience, ever seen the light of day.

You may find -- I have verified it -- that people who have a *spiritual life* always go through purification periods when they find themselves in the midst of (spiritual) processes that seem to have a life of their own. God might be visualized as *an encounter with Jesus* but it may also come through an encounter with the Self (if you go in for Vedantic of Jungian terms). The small, screwed-up, wounded, confused and overwhelmed individual encounters something -- heaven knows what it is -- that appears to take charge in some way and acts as a *guide*. There are no end to the stories from spiritual and religious lore of these types of inner experiences.

A Christian's reckoning with that confused, overwhelmed or lost person, and the restoration of that person, is a fundamental process within Christian conversion. It was that way from the very beginning. The catechumen was brought into the spiritual community on a provisional basis and began a monitored spiritual process called *taking the Christian cure*. They had to prove themselves often for a full year before they could participate with the rest of the (converted) community in the liturgical practice. I find it odd that some, provoked to reaction by Mannie's rigidity, fail to understand that the *conversion process* tied to spiritual growth, social awakening, and serviceful life, is no less real now than it was in former times. Therapeutic processes go on, but they seemed to have jumped out of the limits imposed by strict religious controls.

It's a bit like death, no person that died, ever came back to report to the living that they had in fact died. Or that they had met their maker, creator, and that it sent them to heaven or it sent them to hell.

In fact there is an entire lore about near death experiences (NDE's) and of people who describe coming in to the presence of beings and intelligences that consult with the afflicted person about their situation; review the entire life they have lived; provide a point of reference and advice about what course is best (to abandon the body or to return to life and the body) and a great deal more.

[Harbal]

Right. Well, that's certainly the logical conclusion of Evolutionism: one cannot have a duty to such creatures as we are told we are.

Well it isn't really anything to do with whether we think evolution is how we got here.

Sure it is. What we think we are matters immensely to any justification of duty to each other.

My "world view" doesn't emanate from my attitude towards evolution; evolution is just part of my world view. It's the same with atheism. My lack of belief in God hasn't influenced my world view, but rather my world view just doesn't allow for the inclusion of God. There isn't a God shaped hole in it. Anyway, what I'm saying is that my opinion about evolution hasn't influenced my thoughts about things like duty. Duty is just the name of a feeling we may or may not have. If we feel we have a duty towards someone or something, we tend to be influenced by it, regardless of whether we think duty has any kind of objective presence in the world or not.

Duty is something we either impose on ourselves, or have it imposed on us by some human authority, in which case we may or may not accept it. Both morality and duty are purely human concepts.

If that's so, then duty is merely an illusion. We don't actually owe it to each other: we just make it up, if we want to, or ignore it, if we don't.

Duty is a feeling, or sensation, but if we think there is something that it refers to outside of our own minds, then yes, maybe you could say it's an illusion. I don't think it's accurate to say we just make it up if we want to, or ignore it, if we don't. It doesn't seem to work like that, where we only feel a sense of duty according to whether or not we want to.

If I admire somebody for putting time and effort into doing work for charity, the fact that I don't believe in God, but do believe the theory of evolution, causes me nor anyone else a problem.

Well, unless you think it's a problem for people to believe in things that are unreal -- and unless I mistake your critique of Theism, that's exactly what you do think.

Whether belief in something unreal is a problem or not depends on what consequences come out of it.

What am I risking by admiring someone for doing good, but not having "actual" grounds for doing so?

Deluding oneself. If you think that's a "bad" thing.

Evolutionism would instruct you to think that you were merely imagining things.

But I wouldn't be imagining things, or deluding myself. If I feel admiration, then that feeling actually exists for me. We can feel admiration for various reasons; it isn't just something we experience in regard to moral behaviour. Is there a musician, or sports person that you admire, and if there is, why do you admire them? Surely it's because you put a value on what they do, but I doubt that you think God requires you to appreciate excellent footballing skills. You admire things for your own, subjective reasons.

Yes, we are quite often conflicted between self-interest and doing the "right thing", but, as you say, that is an aspect of human nature, and which direction we go in has more to do with our character than our religious beliefs, I would say.

But think about that claim: that is "has more to do with our character." If we believe the Evolutionists, there's no such thing as "bad character" or "good character." All there is, is the nature of the beast; and beasts do whatever beasts do...it's never good or bad, morally speaking. So there's no such thing as "character," far less "having a good character."

If in the course of our evolution we have installed in us a sense of right and wrong, which we appear to have, then we will experience things in terms of right and wrong, and it is difficult to override that function just by means of rational analysis.

I don't think most people analyse their moral sense to that extend, and neither do most people know anything about Nietzsche.

They really should. Because what Nietzsche did is to analyze their suppositions in a more rigourous and logical way than they, themselves, often find themselves able to do. He showed clearly where secular "moralizing" all ends up, if we follow the logic of Atheism rigorously.

I know Nietzsche is regarded as a genius by some people, but he just comes across as a crackpot and misfit to me, so I can't really go along with you here.

No, you have misinterpreted me. Evolution has no teleological element to it.

Well, I thought you'd resist that suggestion: but then I can't make sense of your claim that Evolution "has seen to it" that anything in particular happens. It's like saying, "The roulette wheel has seen to it Iost my shirt at the casino." Assuming the roulette wheel is not 'fixed' by somebody, there's no malevolence on the part of the roulette wheel, just as there is no benevolence in evolution: both just do whatever it is that randomness produces.

So we needn't take seriously anybody's claim that Evolution "wants" us to do anything, or that it "has arranged that we must/should" do or be anything. Evolutionism's blind, deaf, dumb and morally indifferent to whatever happens.

I was using the terms, "see to" and "arranged", metaphorically, but I acknowledge that was unwise of me. You must know the basic principles of evolution; any characteristic that increases survival and reproduction rate is perpetuated by natural selection.

Morality serves an important function, and no less so for being secular, so viewing it as legitimate is not a problem for me.

It should be. One has to ask whose "function" it's serving. It's not everybody's, clearly: some people end up on the condemned, guilty, sacrificed or punished side of morality. That may "function" for those who put them there; but it certainly doesn't "function" for them. And the people who put them there cannot even themselves explain why the morality that put them there is the "right" morality.

That's pretty cold, if that's how things are.

The value I put on our capacity for behaving within moral boundaries is inevitably set by my experience of how it manifests itself in my own social environment. I only have to think about what life would be like where people have no respect for, and give no consideration to, each other's feelings and well being to appreciate the importance of the function morality serves. I know you prefer to talk in terms of genocide and ruthless dictatorships, but when I talk about morality, I can only speak with any authority on my own, mundane experience of it.

I was merely pointing out the holes in Atheist moralizing; I wasn't trying to make the case for an alternative yet. But realizing that Atheist moralizing makes no sense drives us to a choice, rationally speaking. Namely, we realize that if we are rational persons, we either have to give up moralizing altogether, or give up our Atheism. But we can't really have both, because they contradict each other.

Why on earth should I let myself be forced into that position just because I am a rational human being who does not happen to believe in God? I want to behave morally, and such behaviour is generally approved of, so it does make sense. It is true that I don't know why I want to behave morally, but I don't see why not having a logical reason should prevent me from doing so.

...my point was that people more often act on emotion and sentiment than on rationality, so the lack of a rational reason is not an impediment to living up to moral standards.

Which ones? WHOSE moral standards is anybody supposed to be living up to?

Their own, those of their society, their religion...

You say that such standards simply cannot be objective -- very well, then why would you even be concerned as to whether or not somebody was "living up" to them? Heck, how do you know that what they're "living" to, is even in the direction "up"?

I would be concerned because the moral behaviour of the people I live amongst has a direct effect on my. As for knowing which direction would be up; I only have my own, subjective judgement to call upon.

Maybe living according to something like Sharia law is "down"? Or maybe it's nothing at all. From an Evolutionary perspective, how is one to tell which "morality" is the one that moves in the right direction?

The one that conforms most closely to my own moral sense, I suppose.

It looks like you're taking your own moral presuppositions as a given

What else should I take as given, other than what I've got?

If people "live up to" the sorts of basic moral precepts to which Harbal is accustomed, then they are "living up"; but what if they don't? What does Harbal say then, since he also says morality is not objective?

I suppose he could keep quiet about subjective morality, and invent a story about God and objective moral duty, in the hope that it would convince people to conduct themselves more to his liking, but it would be very much against his moral principles to do that.

[Will Bouwman]

I would also suggest that it is not quite as the atheist says: "You are afraid of death and the senselessness of meaningless existence" but more that the believer is enthused and fired-up with the prospects of energizing and expanding what life means -- what it can mean and all the amazing things that come from an enthusiastic (i.e. filled with god) affirmation of life.

Well Gus, you can search the archive and sticking in 'meaningless life' and author Immanuel Can brought up this sort of stuff.

Refusal to believe God is refusal to believe the only One who can save a person from themselves, from a meaningless existence, from death, and from inheriting exactly whatever it is they're determined to sow. So one has been self-poisoned, and refused the antitode. The outcome is predictable and inevitable.

But human beings are only contingent, temporal, perishing beings themselves. They can't "bestow" meaning on an inherently meaningless universe. They can only delude themselves, if they prefer to, for a time, and then die without any objective meaning being involved at all.

But it makes a huge difference whether we think our suffering is possibly the wise overruling or even dispensation of a loving God, or merely the quirks of an indifferent fate, meaningless and tragic as that would be.

..."meaningless" life is the worst of all. Some people do think that's what it is, of course.

But life is not meaningless. That's what God is telling us. It has meaning, and it has purpose, and it has an outcome, too. This is not the end of the story.

... there's nothing worse than a meaningless life...

All of which suggest a dread of meaninglessness, m'lud.

[Dontaskme]

I have no idea what you're trying to say.

Hey, I know the feeling, I understand, no need to fear, or think I am trying to start a fight with you, don't be scared, I'm quite harmless you know, if you really knew me for real, that is, but since I'm only an anonymous cyber character, you can rest assured in real life realtime actuality, I will be nothing like you ever imagined me to be in cyber world.

So yeah, ditto, I've never had any idea what you are trying to say either, when you claim to know God, so we're on equal footing in the no idea department, no probs.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I think I know what you're trying to say. You're trying to say that you suspect that I might be a person like that. But I'm sorry to disappoint, in that regard: I'm actually somebody who became a Theist as a result of the convergence of several factors, among which were the failure of secular philosophy to explain evil, a personal search through the alternatives, and a personal experience with Jesus Christ, all in my university years. So the whole, "you're only believing this because you're afraid / indoctrinated / culturally propagandized / not aware of the (alleged) contrary evidence, and so on just rings hollow with me.

I'm not at all what you imagine I am. So I can't say that this description troubles me much.

But then nothing of what people say, even when they have justifiable complaints or react to your intellectual misdeeds -- none of this ever seems to *trouble* you. The reason? An impervious position that you hold to no matter what. Nothing moves you. You are right, all others are wrong.

Therefore, what actually happens is that people are forced to interpret you. An issue of hermeneutics of a (fanatically) religion-allied personality. But here is the interesting factor: they cannot rely on you to explain yourself because if you did explain yourself, and if you could, you could only do so through the rigid terms of the System that you have so invested in that it is meshed with your personality.

You very definitely are *what you are imagined to be*, and this is revealed tangibly by what you say, how you say it, and how you generally conduct yourself. You seem to have an odd idea that "people are not understanding me!" and yet, in fact, they do understand you. Some will tell you things similar to *I have been dealing with people like you my whole life*.

Nevertheless, this is a useful image of the conversion process:

{I} became a Theist as a result of the convergence of several factors, among which were the failure of secular philosophy to explain evil, a personal search through the alternatives, and a personal experience with Jesus Christ.

It is useful because it offers a glimpse of a subjective process which, in your case, is converted into absolutism. The experience of a (spiritual) encounter with Jesus is not at all uncommon. But to have become so adamantly married to biblical literalism -- now that is another thing altogether. One does not necessarily follow the other. Or the first does not necessarily produce the second.

At the same time that you defend your personal subjective conversion, you fail to take into consideration those factors that were mentioned: fear, indoctrination and cultural propaganda. Thus your response is merely a defense of a subjective posture and fails to engage, perhaps because you are unaware, of those other influences, so very real and determining. Your defense of religiousness then is seen as lop-sided and defensive. You interpret opposition as the complaint of the benighted. And you hold the key to their illumination and salvation.

The main characteristic that I note in you is your assumption of a role as teacher or guide. This follows from your metaphysics: there is no entity superior to HaShem and Jesus; you are under the wing of HaShem and Jesus; therefore you are their representative here; therefore your perspectives are the right and the ultimate ones. What I might term *arrogance* or an *arrogating personality* is what people often react against in encounters with you. Note that this is not merely your personality failing, but is really part-and-parrcel of the arrogating religious system you align yourself with.

You know, All Knees Will Bow.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Well Gus, you can search the archive and sticking in 'meaningless life' and author Immanuel Can brought up this sort of stuff.

Your assessment of IC, or my assessment, may indeed to be accurate, or somewhat accurate, but Immanuel Can must not be, and in any case is not for me, my real object of concern.

I wonder if you will agree with me that what should concern us (in the sense of intellectual citizens) has to do with *people like him* and by that I mean people who have been trained to think, and see, through rigid, defined lenses. It is not really about Immanuel Can. There is a far wider concern and also that we should really be concerned about ourselves. I.e. that we also could or can become as rigid and determined.

[Immanuel Can]

My "world view" doesn't emanate from my attitude towards evolution; evolution is just part of my world view. It's the same with atheism. My lack of belief in God hasn't influenced my world view, but rather my world view just doesn't allow for the inclusion of God. There isn't a God shaped hole in it. Anyway, what I'm saying is that my opinion about evolution hasn't influenced my thoughts about things like duty. Duty is just the name of a feeling we may or may not have. If we feel we have a duty towards someone or something, we tend to be influenced by it, regardless of whether we think duty has any kind of objective presence in the world or not.

Well, one thing it has influenced, for sure, that is that disbelief you express. You do not see mankind as having any objective duty, because for you, all these things have to be subjective. And why must they be subjective? Perhaps because, in the absence of any objective Authority to issue such duties, one can only believe that they're formed out of the psychological quirks of particular humans and societies. Given what you believe about where we come from, that's hardly surprising: what else can you think but that "duty is just the name of a feeling"?

I don't think you're as uninfluenced by that disbelief in God as you might imagine. I just think that these things have, perhaps, become so deeply-held, so suppositional, so common-sensical given your own worldview, that you have never had occasion to suspect the connection. But rationally speaking, it's not hard to make.

Duty is something we either impose on ourselves, or have it imposed on us by some human authority, in which case we may or may not accept it. Both morality and duty are purely human concepts.

If that's so, then duty is merely an illusion. We don't actually owe it to each other: we just make it up, if we want to, or ignore it, if we don't.

Duty is a feeling, or sensation, but if we think there is something that it refers to outside of our own minds, then yes, maybe you could say it's an illusion. I don't think it's accurate to say we just make it up if we want to, or ignore it, if we don't. It doesn't seem to work like that, where we only feel a sense of duty according to whether or not we want to.

I agree...we do feel duties "whether or not we want to." And that's a surprising fact, if there's nothing objective behind that impression. But if that impression is no more than "a feeling or a sensation," maybe we ought to shake it off the way we shake off a tingling the leg or a sudden twinge of irrational guilt. Maybe it's just a thing to get over, not to be indulged.

How would we know which it was?

If I admire somebody for putting time and effort into doing work for charity, the fact that I don't believe in God, but do believe the theory of evolution, causes me nor anyone else a problem.

Well, unless you think it's a problem for people to believe in things that are unreal -- and unless I mistake your critique of Theism, that's exactly what you do think.

Whether belief in something unreal is a problem or not depends on what consequences come out of it.

That's interesting. So you think it would be okay for people to believe untruths that made them feel happy?

What am I risking by admiring someone for doing good, but not having "actual" grounds for doing so?

Deluding oneself. If you think that's a "bad" thing.

Evolutionism would instruct you to think that you were merely imagining things.

But I wouldn't be imagining things, or deluding myself. If I feel admiration, then that feeling actually exists for me.

Only in the sense that the feeling "exists." Not in the sense that the admiration itself finds any basis or warrant in objective reality.

We can feel admiration for various reasons; it isn't just something we experience in regard to moral behaviour. Is there a musician, or sports person that you admire, and if there is, why do you admire them? Surely it's because you put a value on what they do, but I doubt that you think God requires you to appreciate excellent footballing skills. You admire things for your own, subjective reasons.

Moral admiration is a special type of admiration. It's not really like the others, because of the criteria involved. I can admire Messi's ability to score goals, or a guitarist's musicianship, and it's purely aesthetic in both cases, maybe. But moral admiration is different: it's this strange impression we get that certain actions -- often aesthetically quite unpleasing ones, in some cases -- are deserving of a kind of admiration that tends in the direction of reverence and awe. Something very special is engaged when our moral faculties kick in.

Yes, we are quite often conflicted between self-interest and doing the "right thing", but, as you say, that is an aspect of human nature, and which direction we go in has more to do with our character than our religious beliefs, I would say.

But think about that claim: that is "has more to do with our character." If we believe the Evolutionists, there's no such thing as "bad character" or "good character." All there is, is the nature of the beast; and beasts do whatever beasts do...it's never good or bad, morally speaking. So there's no such thing as "character," far less "having a good character."

If in the course of our evolution we have installed in us a sense of right and wrong, which we appear to have, then we will experience things in terms of right and wrong, and it is difficult to override that function just by means of rational analysis.

That may be true; and maybe it was hard for some monkeys to get rid of the vestigial tail, the Evolutionist might suppose; but that doesn't at all indicate that the monkeys shouldn't have lost the tail, or that we should not simply shake off that odd thing we can't "override by means of rational analysis." Maybe exactly what we DO need is to be more rational about it...

Or maybe not.

I don't think most people analyse their moral sense to that extend, and neither do most people know anything about Nietzsche.

They really should. Because what Nietzsche did is to analyze their suppositions in a more rigourous and logical way than they, themselves, often find themselves able to do. He showed clearly where secular "moralizing" all ends up, if we follow the logic of Atheism rigorously.

I know Nietzsche is regarded as a genius by some people, but he just comes across as a crackpot and misfit to me, so I can't really go along with you here.

What's your problem with Nietzsche?

No, you have misinterpreted me. Evolution has no teleological element to it.

Well, I thought you'd resist that suggestion: but then I can't make sense of your claim that Evolution "has seen to it" that anything in particular happens. It's like saying, "The roulette wheel has seen to it Iost my shirt at the casino." Assuming the roulette wheel is not 'fixed' by somebody, there's no malevolence on the part of the roulette wheel, just as there is no benevolence in evolution: both just do whatever it is that randomness produces.

So we needn't take seriously anybody's claim that Evolution "wants" us to do anything, or that it "has arranged that we must/should" do or be anything. Evolutionism's blind, deaf, dumb and morally indifferent to whatever happens.

I was using the terms, "see to" and "arranged", metaphorically, but I acknowledge that was unwise of me. You must know the basic principles of evolution; any characteristic that increases survival and reproduction rate is perpetuated by natural selection.

I do know that explanation. It's always seemed far too simple-minded to me, though. As I was saying earlier, there's a huge number of phenomena, such as transitional forms, or triadic symbosis, or the human psyche, that just do not lend themselves to that sort of simplistic explanation. In fact, in many cases, survival-of-the-fittest would be the best way to argue that those phenomena should not even be possible to exist.

Morality serves an important function, and no less so for being secular, so viewing it as legitimate is not a problem for me.

It should be. One has to ask whose "function" it's serving. It's not everybody's, clearly: some people end up on the condemned, guilty, sacrificed or punished side of morality. That may "function" for those who put them there; but it certainly doesn't "function" for them. And the people who put them there cannot even themselves explain why the morality that put them there is the "right" morality.

That's pretty cold, if that's how things are.

The value I put on our capacity for behaving within moral boundaries is inevitably set by my experience of how it manifests itself in my own social environment. I only have to think about what life would be like where people have no respect for, and give no consideration to, each other's feelings and well being to appreciate the importance of the function morality serves. I know you prefer to talk in terms of genocide and ruthless dictatorships, but when I talk about morality, I can only speak with any authority on my own, mundane experience of it.

But can we keep our world so small? What about all those places around the world and throughout history -- and there are not a few of them -- where your "mundane experience" is not at all what people have experienced? What consolation can it be that while dictators and genocides have raged, you don't care to trouble yourself with their existence? These extreme cases are what alerts us to the fact that our own thinking is too provincial, to self-centered and to confined. It's the general human condition for which we all must have explanations, not merely for our own local privileges, is it not?

I was merely pointing out the holes in Atheist moralizing; I wasn't trying to make the case for an alternative yet. But realizing that Atheist moralizing makes no sense drives us to a choice, rationally speaking. Namely, we realize that if we are rational persons, we either have to give up moralizing altogether, or give up our Atheism. But we can't really have both, because they contradict each other.

Why on earth should I let myself be forced into that position just because I am a rational human being who does not happen to believe in God?

Precisely to the extent that you are a "rational person" (to say nothng of the fact that we also aspire to be moral agents, as well). A rational person wants his beliefs to be rational. And when one's Atheist deals one a particular hand, rationally speaking, is it not the duty of a rational person to face it squarely? If he does not, then what do we even mean by calling him "rational"?

I want to behave morally, and such behaviour is generally approved of, so it does make sense.

Well, what that means is that it is "convenient." Whether it "makes sense" is a question of rationality.

It is true that I don't know why I want to behave morally, but I don't see why not having a logical reason should prevent me from doing so.

It doesn't prevent you from behaving in any way at all. No law says one has to behave rationally-consistently. It just prevents that way from having any entitlement to being genuinely "moral." For then, there is no such objective thing as "moral."

...my point was that people more often act on emotion and sentiment than on rationality, so the lack of a rational reason is not an impediment to living up to moral standards.

Which ones? WHOSE moral standards is anybody supposed to be living up to?

Their own, those of their society, their religion...

But those conflict. How does one choose among them?

Maybe living according to something like Sharia law is "down"? Or maybe it's nothing at all. From an Evolutionary perspective, how is one to tell which "morality" is the one that moves in the right direction?

The one that conforms most closely to my own moral sense, I suppose.

Intuitionism? How come other people's "intuitions" about morality conflict so radically with our own, sometimes? How can Islamists pursue Sharia, for example, when intuitively, to us, the very thought makes your skin and mine crawl?

It looks like you're taking your own moral presuppositions as a given

What else should I take as given, other than what I've got?

Well one of the first achievements of our moral growing-up is to discover that what we take for granted isn't always right. And what we consider moral isn't what is always moral or fair to other people. So we start to question our own "givens": and some we may keep and some we may modify, but it's that process of NOT taking our our moral presuppositions simply as unexamined "givens" that is basic to our moral maturation. I just suggest that's what we should keep doing: not taking the versions of morality handed to us by others for granted, and continually asking what is genuinely moral about this or that.

If people "live up to" the sorts of basic moral precepts to which Harbal is accustomed, then they are "living up"; but what if they don't? What does Harbal say then, since he also says morality is not objective?

I suppose he could keep quiet about subjective morality, and invent a story about God and objective moral duty, in the hope that it would convince people to conduct themselves more to his liking, but it would be very much against his moral principles to do that.[/quote] And if he violated his own moral principles, would he objectively be a "bad" person, or would he only temporarily be annoyed with himself, then get over it? Because that's exactly what we do, if we don't think our moral judgments are objectively right.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Refusal to believe God is refusal to believe the only One who can save a person from themselves, from a meaningless existence, from death, and from inheriting exactly whatever it is they're determined to sow. So one has been self-poisoned, and refused the antitode. The outcome is predictable and inevitable.

I am very interested in this statement and this sort of statement. The reason? I understand what is being said. But I understand it in a far wider way. So, whereas Immanuel has only one way to understand the *meaning* he presents, and that meaning is held in or doled-out by the religious conception system he works within, and also by his god-terms HaShem and Jesus, I can take this in a very different way. In fact I see it as necessary to take it differently. More widely, more expansively, perhaps more universally.

One thing that I personally realized, though I assume I am on the mark and can't be absolutely sure, is that if there is a power or force in Christian belief the source of that power is in something anterior to Christianity and far older. The idea that I present will, naturally, utterly offend IC as a rigid believer in the Jewish-Christian revelation, but I think it is sound. But when I say *sound* I do mean in a religious-mythic sense.

My sense at this point is that the Jesus story is a retelling of a far older, and far more mythological, but very ingrained and in that sense mythic story: that of Osiris (Jesus) and Isis (Mary). Actually there are 4 players: add Horus (the son) and Seth (the satan, the accuser, the opponent).

The mythic story is simple: Osiris is ordered, sane, non-chaotic life. But Seth entered in and disturbed that order. He caused Osiris's body to be *dismembered* and strewn all over the landscape. Dismemberment -- coming undone, losing one's grip, schizopheric breakdown -- is thus the condition brought about by *the enemy*.

Isis has to gather up all the pieces and reassemble the broken, divided man. If you are at all aware of the iconography, and the European devotional liturgy and worship of Mary, it is easy to see that she represents a process of self-recovery through a maternal and feminine potential. Her love, and in Catholicism her absolute forgiveness and understanding -- she is always the last recourse even for the most lost, the most sinful, those for whom there is no hope and no forgiveness possible by man -- that has always been the *way back in* for man when he gets so far torn asunder by chaos processes.

It is not at all surprising the importance that Mary has had in European religious psychology. She is not really the mother of Jesus, but rather part of a psychological holistic mandala: Osiris and Isis. And the child, Horus, is a natural and necessary outcome. In all European iconography of Mary the Mother & Child is always the supreme focus. It is both an image of physical fertility for people bound to the productive land, but also a symbol of both a man's and a woman's true focus: family life obviously, but one that must shun and must devise talismans against ever-encroaching chaos: Seth.

If the European notion of the devil is understood to be a picturing of Seth -- the eternal opponent -- the entire picture is really quite different from the specific Hebrew-Christian conglomeration of political and social control mechanism.

So, instead of Immanuel Can's control trip that demands that you bow down before his Judeo-Christian demiurge (which disturbingly is actually more similar to Seth than to Osiris), when the actual internal meaning is both taken out and put back in, the mandala actually has a very sane purpose. It is really more a diagram of holistic psychic and psychological wellbeing which is pictured as real and attainable.

Now, please consider, and remember, Isis, Horus and Osiris in their sunny pastures far away from Death's reach!

[bahman]

Refusal to believe God is refusal to believe the only One who can save a person from themselves, from a meaningless existence, from death, and from inheriting exactly whatever it is they're determined to sow. So one has been self-poisoned, and refused the antitode. The outcome is predictable and inevitable.

I am very interested in this statement and this sort of statement. The reason? I understand what is being said. But I understand it in a far wider way. So, whereas Immanuel has only one way to understand the *meaning* he presents, and that meaning is held in or doled-out by the religious conception system he works within, and also by his god-terms HaShem and Jesus, I can take this in a very different way. In fact I see it as necessary to take it differently. More widely, more expansively, perhaps more universally.

One thing that I personally realized, though I assume I am on the mark and can't be absolutely sure, is that if there is a power or force in Christian belief the source of that power is in something anterior to Christianity and far older. The idea that I present will, naturally, utterly offend IC as a rigid believer in the Jewish-Christian revelation, but I think it is sound. But when I say *sound* I do mean in a religious-mythic sense.

My sense at this point is that the Jesus story is a retelling of a far older, and far more mythological, but very ingrained and in that sense mythic story: that of Osiris (Jesus) and Isis (Mary). Actually there are 4 players: add Horus (the son) and Seth (the satan, the accuser, the opponent).

The mythic story is simple: Osiris is ordered, sane, non-chaotic life. But Seth entered in and disturbed that order. He caused Osiris's body to be *dismembered* and strewn all over the landscape. Dismemberment -- coming undone, losing one's grip, schizopheric breakdown -- is thus the condition brought about by *the enemy*.

Isis has to gather up all the pieces and reassemble the broken, divided man. If you are at all aware of the iconography, and the European devotional liturgy and worship of Mary, it is easy to see that she represents a process of self-recovery through a maternal and feminine potential. Her love, and in Catholicism her absolute forgiveness and understanding -- she is always the last recourse even for the most lost, the most sinful, those for whom there is no hope and no forgiveness possible by man -- that has always been the *way back in* for man when he gets so far torn asunder by chaos processes.

It is not at all surprising the importance that Mary has had in European religious psychology. She is not really the mother of Jesus, but rather part of a psychological holistic mandala: Osiris and Isis. And the child, Horus, is a natural and necessary outcome. In all European iconography of Mary the Mother & Child is always the supreme focus. It is both an image of physical fertility for people bound to the productive land, but also a symbol of both a man's and a woman's true focus: family life obviously, but one that must shun and must devise talismans against ever-encroaching chaos: Seth.

If the European notion of the devil is understood to be a picturing of Seth -- the eternal opponent -- the entire picture is really quite different from the specific Hebrew-Christian conglomeration of political and social control mechanism.

So, instead of Immanuel Can's control trip that demands that you bow down before his Judeo-Christian demiurge (which disturbingly is actually more similar to Seth than to Osiris), when the actual internal meaning is both taken out and put back in, the mandala actually has a very sane purpose. It is really more a diagram of holistic psychic and psychological wellbeing which is pictured as real and attainable.

Now, please consider, and remember, Isis, Horus and Osiris in their sunny pastures far away from Death's reach!

Interesting!

[Will Bouwman]

And logic isn't an ideological thing. It will happily serve any "user," like maths will. It is required by both the Theist and the skeptic in equal measure

The ideology comes with your choice of premise.

Again, I don't understand the objection. It's perfectly obvious that logic is just a method, which, like maths, is simply "a handle to fit all pots," rather than a particular ideological orientation.

What are you talking about? There is no objection there.

Logic is what the Theist uses to make his case, but also the thing that the skeptic uses to make his: and it's the same tool you're attempting to employ right now, to convince me that logic isn't a universal tool.

How do you turn this:

The ideology comes with your choice of premise.

into an attempt to convince you that logic isn't a universal tool?

I'm sorry...I'm always amused when people who've never met me tell me they know what my history and motives are.

It is, as with so many hypotheses, underdetermined. And while I have never met you in person, the 21128 posts you have created in a little over 10 years, ((4.19% of all posts / 5.65 posts per day), says your profile) are enough to form an opinion.

...I would suggest that my claim is simply a reversed form of the sort of accusation Atheists routinely launch against Christians: they say, "You only believe in God because you want there to be a God," to which the Christian can rightly rejoin, "You only believe there's not a God because you want there not to be a God." And if the former is true in any cases, then it's not hard to imagine that the latter can be true as well.

There you go: "true as well". Case closed.

[Will Bouwman]

I wonder if you will agree with me...

Never!