Haven’t those who reject morality just because of its religious roots ended up constructing another belief system

[Skepdick]

I'm now merely amusing myself. I have no intention of doing any more serious business with anybody so unserious.

My "unseriousness" is why you can't justify the soundness of your deduction?

If you'd paid attention, you'd already know I provided the justification to somebody else. But you're asleep at the switch.

Keep dozing.

Why are you lying? That's immoral.

Is lying moral on your version of theism?

[Immanuel Can]

My "unseriousness" is why you can't justify the soundness of your deduction?

If you'd paid attention, you'd already know I provided the justification to somebody else. But you're asleep at the switch.

Keep dozing.

Why are you lying?

I'm not. Why are you sleeping?

[Skepdick]

If you'd paid attention, you'd already know I provided the justification to somebody else. But you're asleep at the switch.

Keep dozing.

Why are you lying?

I'm not.

You are. You haven't justified the truth of your premises to anyone.

Why are you sleeping?

You got caught lying by a "sleeping" person.

[Immanuel Can]

Why are you lying?

I'm not.

You are. You haven't justified the truth of your premises to anyone.

You're wrong. But I'm not going to help you understand it, because you're not interested in being right, ya troll.

[Skepdick]

I'm not.

You are. You haven't justified the truth of your premises to anyone.

You're wrong. But I'm not going to help you understand it, because you're not interested in being right, ya troll.

Being sanctimonious about lying how you are "being right"?

Crazy!

[CIN2]

Let's take a "religion" neither you nor I believes is true, just so we're not partisan. Let's call it the religion of "Moo."

The god Moo made everything. (Of course, all Mooists would have to believe this, by definition of being a "Mooist.")
Moo made women only 1/2 the value of a man. (This could be both given in Mooist revelation, and perhaps deducible from the natural world Moo is said to have made, in that women are made smaller and weaker than men.)
Therefore, to value men by a 2-1 ratio over women is moral. (This is deducible from the two previous claims.)

Now, neither you nor I believes in Moo. But we'd both have to concede that if Moo existed, had made the world, and said that he made women to be only half the worth of a man, the rest would logically follow.

No, I wouldn't concede this, because you've actually got two arguments here, not one, and they aren't the same:

Argument 1
The god Moo made everything
Moo made women only 1/2 the value of a man
Therefore, to value men by a 2-1 ratio over women is moral

Argument 2
Moo made the world
Moo said that he made women to be only half the worth of a man
Therefore, to value men by a 2-1 ratio over women is moral

The first argument is valid...

That's the point.

I'm not saying you're a Mooist...in fact, neither of us is. But the argument is deductively valid...meaning it coordinates with the original premises. The truth or falsehood of the premises is a different question, that logicians do not call "validity" but "truthfulness." Thus, they separate the question, "Is this argument the truth," (truth-value) from the question, "Is this argument logically coherent?" (validity)

All I'm claiming for the Mooists is validity, not truthfulness.

Which is why I'm not very interested in your Mooists. I accept, of course, that it is possible to set up merely valid arguments in support of the thesis that a deity creates moral values; that is not the issue between us. The issue is whether it is possible to set up sound arguments that support this thesis in respect of some suggested deity, such as the Christian God. You say it is; I say, prove it.

...their belief that Moo made women less valuable than men cannot be correct.

"Cannot"? What makes you say so?

The fact that I believe it to be impossible. No one is required to believe in something that has not been shown to be possible.

of course women could be created to be 1/2 the value of a man

You can't justify the claim that something is possible by simply saying 'of course' it is possible; you have to provide sound arguments and/or evidence to show that it is possible, which you have not done.

There must be some difference between men and women that could account for the difference in their value. What is this difference? You have only suggested that it might be women being smaller and weaker than men, but I don't see that this is a reason for them to be less valuable from a moral perspective. It might perhaps make them less useful to society, but if you think that this gives them a lower moral value, then you are going to have to provide reasons to justify that view.

...the issue is whether a deity can determine moral values.

Well, if a Supreme Being exists, whether Moo or otherwise, he certainly "can" do that, else he wouldn't be "supreme" at all.

If you are going to define 'supreme' in such a way that a being can only be called 'supreme' if he can set moral values, than you are effectively saying that a being can only be supreme if he can do the impossible. Since no-one can do the impossible, it follows that there can be no supreme being. Congratulations, you are now arguing on the side of atheism.

But sure: if there's a Supreme Being, he can determine moral values. What else could? Secularism certainly cannot.

I don't claim that secularism can determine moral values. Secularism is simply the separation of the state from religious institutions. I claim that moral values, if they exist at all (see * below) , are an emergent property of the natural world. Specifically, once you have the following:
1. beings capable of pleasure and/or pain
2. beings capable of intentionally giving other beings pleasure and/or pain
and
3. free will
then you automatically have morality, because you have beings who can freely decide to do pleasant or painful things to other beings, and that is the only way we know of that you can have morality.
* Since I don't believe that there is such a thing as free will, I don't believe there is in fact any such thing as morality. It's a fantasy.

If you wish to convince me that the Christian God can determine moral values, you are going to have to explain how he does it.

See above.

If there's a creator God, then only He can say for what purposes and roles the creation was created. Only He can say it, because only He would know. And "morality," then, would be whatever coheres with that moral purpose and teleological orientation inherent to the design of the whole creation. "Immorality" would be whatever is oppositional to the functions, purposes and goals for which creation was created by the Creator. And that would be the moral landscape.

It follows from this that if the Creator's purpose is to create a universe in which people suffer as much pain as possible, then habitual and deliberate torture would be morally good in that universe. But habitual and deliberate torture could never be morally good in any universe. If morality exists at all, then habitual and deliberate torture must necessarily be morally bad.

And none of what you say here constitutes an explanation of how God creates moral values. If I ask a watchmaker how he makes a watch, or a chef how he makes a meal, they can tell me how they do it. That is what I am asking you for: what it is that God does that gives beings and their actions moral values. How does he go about it? If you can't tell me, then I have no reason to think that it can be done at all.

Certainly, no contingent being, like humans, say, would be in a better position to speak on that topic. That's surely obvious.

Not only is it not obvious, it isn't even true. There is no reason why the Creator of a universe should be morally superior to the beings in the universe he has created. We are on the verge of being able to create robots that act in the same way as humans. Are we bound to be morally superior to those robots? Of course not.

P.S. -- To be frank, this argument is so easy to win that I can even do it while conceding every one of your objections.

Peter Holmes had the bad habit of claiming that he had won debates with me when he hadn't. Please don't follow his bad example. An argument is only won when both sides agree that it's won, and you are a million miles away from winning this one.

If no religion, no idealogy, and no secularism can justify morality, then what is "morality"? It can be nothing other than an illusion.

I do think morality is an illusion, or more accurately a fantasy, for the reason given above: morality requires free will, and as far as I can see, there is no such thing as free will. This is the case whether God exists or not.

[Immanuel Can]

I accept, of course, that it is possible to set up merely valid arguments in support of the thesis that a deity creates moral values; that is not the issue between us.

Actually, that's exactly the issue between us.

My claims are actually very modest, if you understand them: they're that a religious worldview (of many kinds) can validate a moral system on the basis of its own worlview, even if it turns out the worldview of that religion fails to be true. In other words, there's nothing incoherent about speaking of Hindu morality, or Islamic morality, or Judaic morality, or Christian morality, or even pagan moralities of various kinds. Truth is not the issue: they can all do it.

Secularism cannot validate anything on the basis of its own worlview. My point is not merely that secularism fails this test because it's untrue (I've already pointed out that untrue worldview can pass the test); my point is that secularism cannot structure in a valid way any moral claim at all...even if secularism were true!

Get it yet? "Truthfulness" and "soundness" are not the issue. "Validity" alone is.

...their belief that Moo made women less valuable than men cannot be correct.

"Cannot"? What makes you say so?

The fact that I believe it to be impossible.

The fact that you, personally believe it's impossible means everybody else should agree it "cannot be correct"? I'm sorry, but the word of any one person, or one person's mere belief in something is clearly insufficient warrant to declare anything "impossible." You'll have to do better than that.

There must be some difference between men and women that could account for the difference in their value.

And there could be. Islamists, for example, believe that women are less valuable then men. They claim that it's because Allah is a male entity, and because women are naturally subservient. And they read a lot from the fact that women are smaller and weaker physically, and are more dependent because of things like their reproductive dependency period.

If those are the Islamists' arguments, what makes him wrong? Nothing in secularism helps make a different case.

But something like Christianity might. Christianity says that "neither is woman independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as the woman originated from the man, so also the man has his birth through the woman; and all things originate from God." It also says both man and women were equally created "in the image of God." So that would make them value-equal, despite the obvious differences in things like size, strength and so on.

...the issue is whether a deity can determine moral values.

Well, if a Supreme Being exists, whether Moo or otherwise, he certainly "can" do that, else he wouldn't be "supreme" at all.

If you are going to define 'supreme' in such a way that a being can only be called 'supreme' if he can set moral values, than you are effectively saying that a being can only be supreme if he can do the impossible.

It's not at all impossible, though. Even false religions can set their own moral values; it's only secularism that bogs down and dies at the validity stage.

I don't claim that secularism can determine moral values.

There it is. You're right.

I claim that moral values, if they exist at all (see * below) , are an emergent property of the natural world. Specifically, once you have the following:
1. beings capable of pleasure and/or pain
2. beings capable of intentionally giving other beings pleasure and/or pain
and
3. free will
then you automatically have morality, because you have beings who can freely decide to do pleasant or painful things to other beings, and that is the only way we know of that you can have morality.

If it's just human beings who are deciding then their "morality" is a Nietzschean fake. There's nothing authoritative behind it. Psychopaths and Sociopaths find the pain of others pleasurable, and masochists find their own pain pleasant: what it there in secularism that justifies stopping them and preferring your own view?

* Since I don't believe that there is such a thing as free will, I don't believe there is in fact any such thing as morality. It's a fantasy.

That's a separate point, of course; but if you really believed there's no free will, why are you arguing? According to Determinism, arguing is just the product of whatever the speaker was pre-programmed to believe, and is unrelated to facts, logic, arguments or truth. So there could be nothing more futile than arguing, when both the arguer and the listener are merely predetermined to believe whatever they end up believing.

It follows from this that if the Creator's purpose is to create a universe in which people suffer as much pain as possible, then habitual and deliberate torture would be morally good in that universe.

That's what we call a "hypothetical." The problem with a hypothetical case like that is twofold: one, it's not how things really are, and 2) it's actually not possible to know what the outcome of the phony situation would be.

And none of what you say here constitutes an explanation of how God creates moral values.

That's easy.

He is both the Creator and the Judge of what morality is. Morality, if such exists, was created by none other. None other can say what its purpose and nature are, nor what He created it for. As the ultimate Originator and Final Authority in the universe, God is the source, if you want to believe in any objective morality at all.

Certainly, no contingent being, like humans, say, would be in a better position to speak on that topic. That's surely obvious.

There is no reason why the Creator of a universe should be morally superior to the beings in the universe he has created.

Actually, there is. There's a principle in science that says that any cause must be sufficient to have produced the effect attributed to it. So, for example, if a thousand-pound square rock is moved fifty yards, then dynamite, gravity and earthquake are possible causal explanations: but

bird

and toddler weightlifter are not.

If objective morality exists, then whatever produced that objective morality must be sufficient to the effect attributed to it. You can only choose from among those causal explanations capable of performing the task. Supreme Being is certainly in, and human and secularism are clearly out, if for no other reason than that both are contingent.

We are on the verge of being able to create robots that act in the same way as humans. Are we bound to be morally superior to those robots? Of course not.

Of course we are. The robots are bound to be amoral: they'll only be capable of responding to their programming, even if we make that programming randomized. Morality will never enter their circuits. If we program them to be limited to what we consider "good," they will be; if we program them for things we imagine to be "bad," they will be. But neither way will they have any choice. They won't be moral about either.

P.S. -- To be frank, this argument is so easy to win that I can even do it while conceding every one of your objections.

An argument is only won when both sides agree that it's won...[/quote]
Well, no: that's actually not how it works. An argument is effectively won when logic is offered that cannot be refuted, whether the losing side is willing to admit it or not, actually. One cannot go farther, because people are quite capable of simply becoming intransigent and irrational, if they don't want to hear the truth. I trust you're not of that sort, though.

But let us see. I put a challenge to you, and you can refute me so, so easily: just demonstrate that secularism can serve as justification for one moral precept. Just one. Any one.

Go ahead.

[iambiguous]

An argument is effectively won when logic is offered that cannot be refuted, whether the losing side is willing to admit it or not, actually.

The logic embedded in assuming that the Christian God does in fact exist in Heaven? And while some here merely have to believe this in order to make it true, IC is quick to point out that there is in fact substantive evidence [both historical and scientific] for those who want to go beyond leaps of faith, wagers and Scripture.

Then the part where he argues that anyone who does not accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior cannot be saved. That is what puts them on the losing side.

But let us see. I put a challenge to you, and you can refute me so, so easily: just demonstrate that secularism can serve as justification for one moral precept. Just one. Any one.

Of course, over and again, I have challenged IC to explore the RF videos with me. And he refuses to. And while I agree with him that secular morality justifies only that which the various secular advocates assume about the human condition, at least you're not sent to Hell for all of eternity if you don't toe their line.

Instead, what any number of these folks...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_philosophies

...will insist is that only their own One True Path is justified. Then the part where many of these folks...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

...will embrace IC's theological approach to human morality, but only in order to remind him it's his own soul that's on the line.

[Skepdick]

Secularism cannot validate anything on the basis of its own worlview. My point is not merely that secularism fails this test because it's untrue (I've already pointed out that untrue worldview can pass the test); my point is that secularism cannot structure in a valid way any moral claim at all...even if secularism were true!

That's simply not true.

Any moral claim can be validated using nothing other than the axiom of identity.
If X, then X (X→X) is a valid logical inference.

If morality exists, then morality exists.
If humans have moral worth, then humans have moral worth.
If genocide is wrong, then genocide is wrong.

There. All valid.

Get it yet? "Truthfulness" and "soundness" are not the issue. "Validity" alone is.

Get it yet? Validity is never an issue.

[Immanuel Can]

Secularism cannot validate anything on the basis of its own worlview. My point is not merely that secularism fails this test because it's untrue (I've already pointed out that untrue worldview can pass the test); my point is that secularism cannot structure in a valid way any moral claim at all...even if secularism were true!

That's simply not true.

Sure it is. That is precisely why you've provided no such moral claim. You can't. QED.

[Gary Childress]

Secularism cannot validate anything on the basis of its own worlview. My point is not merely that secularism fails this test because it's untrue (I've already pointed out that untrue worldview can pass the test); my point is that secularism cannot structure in a valid way any moral claim at all...even if secularism were true!

That's simply not true.

Sure it is. That is precisely why you've provided no such moral claim. You can't. QED.

To be fair, "because God says so" doesn't seem like a very good foundation for morality either. I mean, the Bible seems to have things like divine-sanctioned genocide and the drowning of the whole human race save for a select few. For all we know, God may not be a very moral character if s/he does stuff like that. What if God were to say, "Go rob a poor, hungry orphan"? Would that be a moral thing to do just by virtue of "God says so"?

[Immanuel Can]

That's simply not true.

Sure it is. That is precisely why you've provided no such moral claim. You can't. QED.

To be fair, "because God says so" doesn't seem like a very good foundation for morality either.

That's what's called an "et tu quoque" fallacy. You're trying to argue as if saying "nobody else can" would mean that secularism could. But secularism, even if we accept it as reality, and even if (contrary to fact) there were not another ideology anywhere on earth that could, would still be unable to ground a single moral claim...and would, if believed, inevitably therefore issue in moral nihilism. There would be no such thing as morality.

Nietzsche said that. I also say it. But you can discover it for yourself, just by thinking carefully. You won't find one single moral precept that secularism can necessitate.

[Gary Childress]

Sure it is. That is precisely why you've provided no such moral claim. You can't. QED.

To be fair, "because God says so" doesn't seem like a very good foundation for morality either.

That's what's called an "et tu quoque" fallacy. You're trying to argue as if saying "nobody else can" would mean that secularism could. But secularism, even if we accept it as reality, and even if (contrary to fact) there were not another ideology anywhere on earth that could, would still be unable to ground a single moral claim...and would, if believed, inevitably therefore issue in moral nihilism. There would be no such thing as morality.

Nietzsche said that. I also say it. But you can discover it for yourself, just by thinking carefully. You won't find one single moral precept that secularism can necessitate.

I agree. It's not an easy thing for anyone to come up with moral precepts. However, most of us can generally know the difference between being moral toward someone versus being immoral toward them--even secularists can know that.

[Immanuel Can]

To be fair, "because God says so" doesn't seem like a very good foundation for morality either.

That's what's called an "et tu quoque" fallacy. You're trying to argue as if saying "nobody else can" would mean that secularism could. But secularism, even if we accept it as reality, and even if (contrary to fact) there were not another ideology anywhere on earth that could, would still be unable to ground a single moral claim...and would, if believed, inevitably therefore issue in moral nihilism. There would be no such thing as morality.

Nietzsche said that. I also say it. But you can discover it for yourself, just by thinking carefully. You won't find one single moral precept that secularism can necessitate.

I agree. It's not an easy thing for anyone to come up with moral precepts.

Oh, I'm not saying that's true. It's actually quite straightforward, if you believe in a Creator. And I've already gone over an example of how: so long as your morals coordinate with your ontological worldview, your morals are valid. (Their truthfulness is yet to be established, but at least they're rational, and thus potentially true, even if not actually.) But it's impossible for a secularist to create any valid moral claim. He's got zero. Even if his whole worldview or ontology was truthful, it would still issue in the conclusion that there's no such thing as morality.

However, most of us can generally know the difference between being moral toward someone versus being immoral toward them--even secularists can know that.

Not on the basis of their secularism, however. They can "know" it by upbringing, by habit, by aculturation into a different worldview, by universal conscience, perhaps...but the minute they try to explain WHY thing X or Y is "moral," they can't. Nothing moral issues from secularism.

They know the world's a moral place. They just can't figure out how they know that.

[Gary Childress]

However, most of us can generally know the difference between being moral toward someone versus being immoral toward them--even secularists can know that.

Not on the basis of their secularism, however. They can "know" it by upbringing, by habit, by aculturation into a different worldview, by universal conscience, perhaps...but the minute they try to explain WHY thing X or Y is "moral," they can't. Nothing moral issues from secularism.

They know the world's a moral place. They just can't figure out how they know that.

Can you explain to me how you know that the world is a moral place? I mean, Yaweh doesn't seem like a particularly moral God to me. Is the world indeed a "moral place"? And if so, what demonstrates to you that the world is a "moral place"?