What is morality?

[Immanuel Can]

The standard of truth is God. I could be wrong; but He never can.

And if God were to have told me what was moral, say in Torah, and I pretended not to understand, or not to be capable of deciding what was right, then to ignore that would be worse than ignorance; it would be rank, mendacious disobedience.

HOW is that different from "I believe, I have faith, this is right and that is wrong"?

Even if you say that, you're assuming the existence of some standard of "moral" (which you call "right and wrong") in which you can "have faith" that "this is." But whereas I have the word of God for it, and you have nothing at all, by your own admission.

[Dubious]

But whereas I have the word of God for it...

Was it personally delivered or did you get it from a book?

[Immanuel Can]

But whereas I have the word of God for it...

Was it personally delivered or did you get it from a book?

Well, let's see what you can do without it, either way.

Give me one axiom, precept or moral demand that you can make obligatory by reference to secularism of some sort. I'll give you complete freedom as to the axiom you choose, and complete freedom as to the secular ideology from which you rationalize it. Let's see what you've got.

[Dubious]

But whereas I have the word of God for it...

Was it personally delivered or did you get it from a book?

Well, let's see what you can do without it, either way.

Give me one axiom, precept or moral demand that you can make obligatory by reference to secularism of some sort. I'll give you complete freedom as to the axiom you choose, and complete freedom as to the secular ideology from which you rationalize it. Let's see what you've got.

Getting your morals from a book means you don't in any way have to rationalize or think about it. You simply decide to accept it as stated, as a computer would a line of code which doesn't ask whether it's right, wrong or no-longer applicable. Nothing in the bible makes a moral demand obligatory if I decide it doesn't follow. Therefore your Let's see what you've got demand is totally non-sequitur.

[Immanuel Can]

Was it personally delivered or did you get it from a book?

Well, let's see what you can do without it, either way.

Give me one axiom, precept or moral demand that you can make obligatory by reference to secularism of some sort. I'll give you complete freedom as to the axiom you choose, and complete freedom as to the secular ideology from which you rationalize it. Let's see what you've got.

Getting your morals from a book means you don't in any way have to rationalize or think about it.

I disagree. But let's pretend you're right.

So let's see you "rationalize" and "think about it."

What's your secularly "rationalizable" moral axiom?

[Dubious]

Well, let's see what you can do without it, either way.

Give me one axiom, precept or moral demand that you can make obligatory by reference to secularism of some sort. I'll give you complete freedom as to the axiom you choose, and complete freedom as to the secular ideology from which you rationalize it. Let's see what you've got.

Getting your morals from a book means you don't in any way have to rationalize or think about it.

I disagree. But let's pretend you're right.

So let's see you "rationalize" and "think about it."

What's your secularly "rationalizable" moral axiom?

You frame the question from only YOUR perspective that secular morality is inferior to the biblically mandated one accepted as axiomatic and therefore unquestionable. My view is completely opposite. That morality on a secular level must be rationalized to take effect. Your morality does not require a "thinking" process but merely an "acceptance" which doesn't require any processing or at best, an absolute minimun.

Your bogus "axioms" are purely biblical to which you subscribe without further inquiry. Secular morality by contrast, is both analytical and philosophical yielding a complexity which rarely ceases to be debated. It contains no axioms except as a categorical imperative. The modulations of secular morality can be complex compared to the scriptural kind which one teaches to little kids who are ready to accept whatever their teachers and parents say. I still recall that very well!

[Immanuel Can]

Getting your morals from a book means you don't in any way have to rationalize or think about it.

I disagree. But let's pretend you're right.

So let's see you "rationalize" and "think about it."

What's your secularly "rationalizable" moral axiom?

You frame the question from only YOUR perspective that secular morality is inferior to the biblically mandated one...

Far from it. All I ask is to see secularism ground one moral axiom from ITS OWN view. Just one. Any one. Anything you choose.

If secularism knows ANYTHING about morality, that's the very, very least it should be able to do.

You've got nothing.

[MikeNovack]

HOW is that different from "I believe, I have faith, this is right and that is wrong"?

Even if you say that, you're assuming the existence of some standard of "moral" (which you call "right and wrong") in which you can "have faith" that "this is. But whereas I have the word of God for it, and you have nothing at all, by your own admission.

Are you REALLY that dense.

You have only your belief/faith for the word of the Great Pink Unicorn.

[Immanuel Can]

HOW is that different from "I believe, I have faith, this is right and that is wrong"?

Even if you say that, you're assuming the existence of some standard of "moral" (which you call "right and wrong") in which you can "have faith" that "this is. But whereas I have the word of God for it, and you have nothing at all, by your own admission.

You have only your belief/faith for the word of the Great Pink Unicorn.

I love it when skeptics bluntly assume their own conclusion, and then demand you participate with them in their fantasies. It's just so transparently lame. I was kind of hoping for some remotely challenging or insightful rejoinder...and this really isn't it.

You have not proved God doesn't exist, nor can you. Nor can you prove that the Scriptures revered by Jews and Christians are not His Word. There is evidence, and you dismiss it. And that's fine; you can do so -- but you can never honestly claim there's no evidence for God. And you cannot banish God from existence, from plausibility, or even from the realm of possibility, by mere mockery.

So now, having achieved nothing by way of any evidence, you ask us to believe in pink unicorns? Atheists are fond of quoting, Christopher Hitchens, who once said, "That which can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." That axiom surely applies here. You've still got nothing upon which you can base an answer to the OP, "What is morality?" Based on secularism, you'd have to say, "It's a fiction." As we have considered, neither individualist relativism nor cultural relativism can account for it.

So what can?

And we're back to the OP.

[MikeNovack]

I love it when skeptics bluntly assume their own conclusion, and then demand you participate with them in their fantasies. It's just so transparently lame. I was kind of hoping for some remotely challenging or insightful rejoinder...and this really isn't it.

You have not proved God doesn't exist, nor can you. Nor can you prove that the Scriptures revered by Jews and Christians are not His Word.

You are being idiotic.

Correct --- I have not proved God does not exist, nor can I, NOR DO I HAVE ANY INTEREST IN DOING SO. Likewise I cannot disprove the existence of the Great Pink Unicorn.

Correct, I have not proved the Torah is not "al pi Adonay b'yod Moshe" nor have I an interest in doing so.

So....?

I do not have to DISPROVE existence to successfully argue that all you have in favor is belief/faith, that you can't prove existence. Your faith/belief is not superior to the skeptics doubt << BTW, if you read any of the classical skeptics you'd know they thought it a waste of time to argue about gods >>

[Immanuel Can]

I love it when skeptics bluntly assume their own conclusion, and then demand you participate with them in their fantasies. It's just so transparently lame. I was kind of hoping for some remotely challenging or insightful rejoinder...and this really isn't it.

You have not proved God doesn't exist, nor can you. Nor can you prove that the Scriptures revered by Jews and Christians are not His Word.

You are being idiotic.

Correct --- I have not proved God does not exist, nor can I, NOR DO I HAVE ANY INTEREST IN DOING SO.

Right. You're simply not interested in the evidence, either way. Your mind's made up. I get it.

Correct, I have not proved the Torah is not "al pi Adonay b'yod Moshe" nor have I an interest in doing so.

So....?

Same comment. You're not commending your open-mindedness, or your seriousness about truth, apparently. I'm starting to wonder why you're even engaged in the topic. But for some reason, you seem to think that "morality" is worth your time to argue for, even though you can't provide a single foundation stone to rest it on.

Interesting...but not particularly intellectually challenging.

BTW, if you read any of the classical skeptics you'd know they thought it a waste of time to argue about gods >>

Name one. I'll bet you I've not only read him, but I'd be surprised if I don't have something from him here on my desk. Hume? Nietzsche? Voltaire? Camus? Sartre? How about the newer guys, like Gray, Nagel, Flew...or the populist writers, like Hitchens and Dawkins? Who've you got? Chances are I've read him. Let's talk about what he says.

[MikeNovack]

BTW, if you read any of the classical skeptics you'd know they thought it a waste of time to argue about gods >>

Name one. I'll bet you I've not only read him, but I'd be surprised if I don't have something from him here on my desk. Hume? Nietzsche? Voltaire? Camus? Sartre? How about the newer guys, like Gray, Nagel, Flew...or the populist writers, like Hitchens and Dawkins? Who've you got? Chances are I've read him. Let's talk about what he says.

Name one? How about Pyrrho?

IC, did you not see the CLASSICAL? Of course much of what we know of the ancient skeptics is via Sextus Empiricus quoting them.

You are really being silly arguing that humanists are only standing on sand because they lack the firm foundation of God. Your belief in God is also just faith, equally standing on sand.

You want me to be clear about where I think "morality" comes from and I am answering you "part of being human". Intrinsic to us. We know/were taught that there is right and there is wrong, and we believe this to be so. STOP -- do not confuse what I just said with my arguing that means we intrinsically act "rightly" or that the particular rules we learned/were taught were the CORRECT ones.

German/Yiddish makes this association clearer with mensch/menschlichkeit

[Immanuel Can]

BTW, if you read any of the classical skeptics you'd know they thought it a waste of time to argue about gods >>

Name one. I'll bet you I've not only read him, but I'd be surprised if I don't have something from him here on my desk. Hume? Nietzsche? Voltaire? Camus? Sartre? How about the newer guys, like Gray, Nagel, Flew...or the populist writers, like Hitchens and Dawkins? Who've you got? Chances are I've read him. Let's talk about what he says.

IC, did you not see the CLASSICAL?

Well, Atheism isn't classical, just as "classical music" isn't actually classical, but rather Baroque or Romantic.

Classically, people were overwhelmingly polytheistic. Atheism only became a common taste in the West, and largely in the 18th Century. But if you want to go back to the ancients, we can. Their arguments aren't very good, though, you'll find.

You want me to be clear about where I think "morality" comes from...

No, I asked you how it can be justified, no matter where you think it "came from." And that's quite a different question. The latter's unimportant, if the former is unsubstantiated. It might just be another delusional idea, in that case. The "classicals" had lots of those, whether you mean the 18th Century or the ancients.

It can't be justified by individualist relativism, and we can't justify it with cultural relativism, because both are more changeable than the weather. So if morality is to be considered any real thing, upon what do you ground it?

[MikeNovack]

You are being idiotic.

Correct --- I have not proved God does not exist, nor can I, NOR DO I HAVE ANY INTEREST IN DOING SO.

Right. You're simply not interested in the evidence, either way. Your mind's made up. I get it.

Well my mind is made up THERE IS NOT EVIDENCE and THERE COULD BE NO EVIDENCE for the existence of God. The question of whether there is a God is a matter of belief, faith, not logical examination of evidence.

That is NOT an argument about the existence/non-existence of God but only about how we must approach such a question.

When I do present a rational explanation where "morality" might come from in terms of our evolution as obligatory social animals you reject off hand based on your BELIEFS (your religious beliefs) that there is no evolution, we are not animals, etc. Notice that I am NOT making a demand of "morality" that it be eternal, WE ARE NOT ETERNAL, evolution implies change. And obviously OUR morality (morality for humans) would be the same as that of the other obligatory social animals.

[Immanuel Can]

You are being idiotic.

Correct --- I have not proved God does not exist, nor can I, NOR DO I HAVE ANY INTEREST IN DOING SO.

Right. You're simply not interested in the evidence, either way. Your mind's made up. I get it.

Well my mind is made up THERE IS NOT EVIDENCE and THERE COULD BE NO EVIDENCE for the existence of God.

And just how did you get to that position?

Without evidence. No other way.

When I do present a rational explanation where "morality" might come from in terms of our evolution as obligatory social animals you reject off hand based on your BELIEFS (your religious beliefs) that there is no evolution, we are not animals, etc.

That's because you're not even understanding the question. The question isn't "Where might belief in morality have come from," it's "Is there any justification for morality"?

You're guilty of what's called "The Genetic Fallacy."

Definition: "A genetic fallacy is a logical error where someone accepts or rejects a claim based solely on its origin, history, or source rather than its actual content or merit." (Wiki)

"Genetic Fallacy (also known as: fallacy of origins, fallacy of virtue) Description: Basing the truth claim of an argument on the origin of its claims or premises." (Logically Fallacious)

In other words, you can't say you've justified any morality by saying something like "we got it from the apes," or even "our ancient ancestors believed it." That misses the whole problem of whether or not what the apes or ancient ancestors did was right, true or good, or foolish, false and bad.

So your answer is no answer at all. That's why it's being rejected.