1

About the Christian art, I have to disagree. Maybe I'm reading it wrong. Maybe he's talking about memories or images brought on by pondering the wrong things. But what does one do with the images seared there by the visual encounters one has daily? Is he saying we should have these good images superimposed on the screen of our minds, so we don't see the woman dressed like this or that, or the woman in the billboard? Car wreck time. Granted, maybe he's saying we should be so familiar with, and fond of the good images, that we aren't affected by the encounters.
Either way, it's just another mental trick. Think about this instead, have this thought prominent in your mind, and you won't lust after those women anymore. I've tried a number of those thoughts. Serious thoughts, righteous thoughts, philosophical thoughts, but none worked for more than a few days. I myself am an artist, and am perhaps more aware than most the details of female form and gestures. What I do know for certain is that I really struggled with it.
Then, after 17 years of struggle, the Lord let me see that this war isn't won with mental tricks, but rather, at an emotional level. When I began to be disgusted with the lustful look, and partaking of the exchange (she shares, you absorb), then I had a major breakthrough. This one lasts. Even if the gal is dressed more "classy", it's still an extension of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll genre. I'm tired of being the lowly one who lusts after her. When you see the offering put before your eyes, think "eww yuck, I'm not part of this". It will be a whole lot less of a problem than before. Be disgusted with it, hate sin, you'll be better off.

2

The atheist believes that each of us is free to be moral or not.

No one is obliged to be moral, outside of the pleadings of his own conscience. So in that limited sense, there is absolutely no atheistic basis for morality. In an indifferent cosmos, the stars do not weep over our sins.

On the other hand, there is a simple and quite powerful basis for an atheistic morality (although, there is nothing peculiarly "atheistic" about it: the basis to which I am referring depends neither on the non-existence or the existence of God -- it is God-neutral). The basis of morality is the simple and quite powerful observation that no man is an island. Each of us deals with other persons from the day we are born until the day we die.

Since we do have to deal with other persons on an ongoing basis, we need to have some rules that will guide us in our interactions. When we ponder what those rules should be, we are basically confronted with two choices (although there are others, but I won't go into that right now): do everything possible to selfishly promote one's owns interests, even to the detriment of others; or live a life of reciprocity, as summarized by the Golden Rule (which seems to be a feature of every culture in the history of the planet, although sometimes its scope is restricted to some in-group).

My own version of the Golden Rule is something I have shared on the Evangelical Outpost many times: help others, and avoid hurting others.

Now, why should an atheist commit himself to a good morality, as opposed to a selfish, purely self-serving morality? I can think of two reasons off the top of my head.

One is that it is awfully hard to get away with being a selfish son-of-a-gun your whole life. You can get away with pure selfishness here and there for a little while perhaps, but being a selfish jerk is the kind of thing that catches up with you sooner or later, and usually in a very harsh way.

But even if one assumes, for the sake of argument, that some very clever person who wanted to be purely selfish could get away with it, there is an even more powerful reason why such a person should reject that selfish course. The reason is that such a person is not worthy of admiration or friendship or love, unless he repents and agrees to rejoin the society of his fellow men and women. And someone who is not worthy of love would be forced to hate himself on some level, unless he were a sociopath.

An associated reason is that such a selfish life would be deeply deeply dishonest (due to the need to hide one's motives and desires from other people), and for someone such as myself, who esteems honesty and the truth, such a life would be a purely disgusting nightmare.

Not everyone will find my reasons to choose morality to be as compelling as you or I find them to be, of course. That is why wise men like President Reagan advise us to "Trust, but verify". Civilization has a way of lulling us into forgetting that life has its roots in a jungle-like competition of the fittest. We need to remind ourselves to always be vigilant against selfish people, and against moral people who sin against us in moments of weakness.

Nevertheless, the basis for a non-theistic morality is there, for theists and atheists alike to use as they please: If we must interact with people, as we all must do, then it is better to play straight than to cheat -- either pragmatically, or just so we can earn the respect of others and our own self-respect.

3

Joe,
the research in #20 is an example of PRIMING, which happens for good or ill more often than we would at first think. A good intro is the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell if you haven't read it already; I read it last month will probably review it on my site next week. Two other links on the concept of artificial beauty that I have found intriguing are at http://tutiki.nikoncafe.com/w/index.php/Beautiful_Skin_by_Czechman
----and----
http://www.uni-regensburg.de/Fakultaeten/phil_Fak_II/Psychologie/Psy_II/beautycheck/english/missgermany/missgermany.htm

4

The atheist believes that each of us is free to be moral or not.

Matthew, you seem to be implying that there is some objective basis for morality here, that some behaviors are inherently moral or immoral. On what would you base this?

...The basis of morality is the simple and quite powerful observation that no man is an island. Each of us deals with other persons from the day we are born until the day we die.

This really doesn't help us to determine what it means to treat a person morally.

One is that it is awfully hard to get away with being a selfish son-of-a-gun your whole life. You can get away with pure selfishness here and there for a little while perhaps, but being a selfish jerk is the kind of thing that catches up with you sooner or later, and usually in a very harsh way.

Sounds like Karma, at the very least a quasi-religious belief. But really, is there any empirical evidence that you are more likely to meet a bad end if you are a "selfish jerk"?

Anyway, I think the real problem with your post is that you are too heavily influenced by our modern, Western culture; where the good guy gets the gal and the bad guy gets the shaft. The real world is much different, especially the farther you go outside the West. In most of the world, ruthlessness pays and the bad guys are just as likely to die peacefully in their bed as to end up dancing on the end of a rope, or worse. I would argue that in most of the world, the peace-loving and the meek are the ones most likely to end up with the short end of the stick.

5

The basis for objective morality is reason. This is why a group of people from all religions and no religions can agree on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, it's hard, if not impossible, to find two Christians who agree 100% on every doctrinal and ethical point of their belief system even though they claim to follow the same god and holy book.

The real ethical relativists and hypocrites are Christians. For them, murdering babies is wrong, unless their god commands it (as in the Old Testament), then it's right.

6

The reason they could agree on the UDHR was that the majority of them were sympathetic to socialism, which is just another religion.

The killing of babies was sanctioned at particular occasions because the aggressive men had to be killed (self-defence), Israel couldn't absorb the babies into the population, and the only other option was to let them die of starvation and thirst in the desert, which no one would have preferred.

To say that Christians are therefore 'ethical relativists' and 'hypocrites' is absurd, because God isn't giving that kind of direct political commands anymore.

And ex-preacher has not demonstrated why it would be moral to be reasonable. Why would a reasonable person be charitable, hopeful, or faithful? Faith, hope and love (charity) are at bottom irrational virtues.

Your ideas are rather outmoded, really. The idea that right reason = right morality has been dead for millennia. People like Euripides, St. Paul and St. Augustine have shown that the human psychology is more complex than that.

Matthew: If we must interact with people, as we all must do, then it is better to play straight than to cheat -- either pragmatically, or just so we can earn the respect of others and our own self-respect.

Here's a case. A married couple (both aged somewhere between 35 and 40) don't find much happiness in their married state anymore, although there is no domestic violence in the house. They think they would be able to respect themselves more if they had a divorce, and their friends wouldn't object to that. Should they stay together or divorce?

7

The basis for objective morality is reason. This is why a group of people from all religions and no religions can agree on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

What is reason and how do you determine that one course of action is reasonable, and therefore moral and one is not. Allow me to "pull a JohnW" and analogize back to the decision to go to war in Iraq. In 2002, it was reasonable to assume that Saddam Hussein had WMD's and ties to terrorists, and in the wake of 9/11, posed a threat to the US; therefore the decision to attack Iraq was moral using reasonable = moral as the criteria. Now, obviously you don't support the decision to go to war in Iraq, but using your criteria if would be hard to argue that it was an immoral decision. The reality is that there is no objective standard for what is reasonable. In the safe and secure confines of the US, what is reasonable would make no sense in most places in the world.

8

As concerns the source of moral obligation, I find that a certain epistemological issue worries we most. Most Evangelicals, for instance, say that the source of moral obligation is God, and that we know of God's will for us through the Bible. But then they must answer this question: how does one know that the Bible is the word of God? The answer, whatever it is, must assume that we have within ourselves, prior to our aquaintance with the Bible, the means to tell what is likely to have come from God and what is unlikely to have come from God. But then it seems that, whatever it is within us that gives us this means, the Bible (or indeed any text) can't really be foundational to our knowledge of ethical matters. No doubt it can help us along; it can give us new insights, and can refine what we already know. But it can't be the starting point of ethical knowledge. Now, it may well be that this innate ability to discern what is from God from what is not was implanted in us by God. (This is my view.) But no matter what one says about that issue, one simply cannot say that one knows that x is right or wrong simply because (as the children's hymn says) the Bible tells us so.

9

Nice website. We need more evangelical Christians blogging on the net. Check out my website at www.joshroberie.com for other intersting views and comments on evangelical life and spirituality.

10

This is why a group of people from all religions and no religions can agree on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Actually this isn't correct. Most Muslim countries use a modified version of the UDHR stating that all human rights must comply with Islamic law. The Chinese, at least the government, typically consider human rights to only consist of having food, clothing and shelter. Add in that many non-Western countries will sign anything as long as the foreign aid keeps flowing, I think it is hard to claim there is some universal agreement on human rights.

11

And the original UDHR states that rights and freedoms may in no way be exercised contrary to the purposes of the UN, which is hardly 'reasonable', and with which many people (even moral people) would not agree.

12

And the original UDHR states that rights and freedoms may in no way be exercised contrary to the purposes of the UN, which is hardly 'reasonable', and with which many people (even moral people) would not agree.

13

Jim D,
You misunderstand how Christian art is supposed to function. We experience a serious lack of beauty in our American culture. Particularly those who live in the city who are cut off from most of the beauty of nature. Beauty is attractive. We must seek out what is beautiful because it is in our nature. Much of the time, we in our culture seek beauty in the wrong places because this kind of perverted beauty is the most prevelent kind in our culture. Looking at beautiful images that display beauty rightly can habituate the Christian to prefer true beauty over its perversions. Furthermore, when one becomes more accustomed to seeing beauty, the effect of things who have perverted beauty will not be so strong on the mind. Basically, looking at truly beautiful art and making a practice of this can formulate the way the Christian interacts with beauty by habituating him to seek after true beauty. What is important to remember is that truly beautiful art can be an aquired taste. We need to learn how to consume and appreciate it. However, once this is learned, one will tend to prefer true beauty to perverted beauty just as one will prefer a fine glass of wine over a bottle of Colt 45.

14

Oh my goodness... the "evolution of a slob"...priceless.

15

"What is reason and how do you determine that one course of action is reasonable, and therefore moral and one is not. Allow me to "pull a JohnW" and analogize back to the decision to go to war in Iraq. In 2002, it was reasonable to assume that Saddam Hussein had WMD's and ties to terrorists, and in the wake of 9/11, posed a threat to the US; therefore the decision to attack Iraq was moral using reasonable = moral as the criteria. Now, obviously you don't support the decision to go to war in Iraq, but using your criteria if would be hard to argue that it was an immoral decision. The reality is that there is no objective standard for what is reasonable. In the safe and secure confines of the US, what is reasonable would make no sense in most places in the world. "

Actually there was absolutely no logical reason to assume that Iraq had any functionnal WMD arsenal or Program back in 2002 and virtually every reason to believe otherwise. As for link to terrorism,that charge has become so ambiguous that it can virtually mean anything nowadays but there was no intelligence suggesting that Iraq was actively engaged in terrorist actions against the US and every logical reason to assume that they would have avoided those activities like the plague. so as such,there was no moral basis for invading Iraq...not then and not now.

16

ucfengr

While I agree with your point, you should know better than to invoke the name of him who should not be named in connection with the war which should not be called war. "Pulling a ****W" brings out other moonbats like "***wig."

17

Since I really don't want to get dragged down an Iraqi rabbit hole I will refrain from commenting on Lud's post other than to point out that it is an excellent example of my assertion that there is no objective standard for reason. Which leads to the conclusion that it's pretty worthless in determining morality.

18

there is no objective standard for reason.

Amusing and wrong. Have you ever heard of the rules of logic? Would you agree that they are objective? If not, then in what way are they not objective? Logic *is* the basis of reason (and like it or not, it is also the basis of faith).

If the rules of logic are not objective (and you'll have to come up with a way to prove that), then maybe you have a point, otherwise your statement and your conclusion reads like someone who is running away from an argument they are unable to deal with coherently.

19

Ucfengr,

[Matthew said:]"The atheist believes that each of us is free to be moral or not."

Matthew, you seem to be implying that there is some objective basis for morality here, that some behaviors are inherently moral or immoral. On what would you base this?

What I am trying to say is that morality is not imposed by outside forces, such as God, but is something that each individual has to choose to accept or not.

Now when I refer to "morality", I don't mean to say, necessarily, that one thing is objectively moral and some other thing is objectively immoral. Instead, when I refer to "morality", I am defining it as some version of the Golden Rule and admitting that it is a man-made piece of work. I am avoiding worrying about whether, for example, murder is objectively immoral by simply making murder immoral by definition. I changed it to a question of semantics.

But then the next step in my argument is that although morality is a man-made thing, there are perfectly objective reasons for taking this man-made thing and choosing to make it the basis of our ethical lives.

What are the objective reasons?

It is an objective, undeniable fact that humans are social animals who must interact with other humans just about every day of their lives. This is not merely my subjective opinion, or an over-generalization of my subjective experience. It is a hard, objective fact.

Next, it is my considered opinion that a purely selfish person is going to provoke a harsh backlash, and that this inevitable backlash is a strong reason to avoid being purely selfish in life. If I am correct, then that too would be an objective reason to embrace the morality of the Golden Rule.

And finally, the main reason I give for choosing morality over selfishness is that such a choice is the only way to live a healthy, fulfilled, and meaningful life. This is perhaps a very subjective reason, but it a reason that is nonetheless based on what I believe to be objective observations of the human condition and human psychology.

So, in brief, morality is not objective, but there are compelling reasons to adopt morality anyway. Since those reasons appear to pretty much universal in scope (they appear to apply to just about everyone), they constitute an objective basis for the admittedly man-made morality.

[Matthew said:] "...The basis of morality is the simple and quite powerful observation that no man is an island. Each of us deals with other persons from the day we are born until the day we die."

This really doesn't help us to determine what it means to treat a person morally.

What I used to determine my Golden Rule ("help, don't hurt others") is very simple: What would other people want my morality to be? Would they want me to be selfish, or would they want me to treat other people well? And I took the answer and made it the definition of my morality.

The reason I stress the fact that we interact with other people is because without other people, there is really no need for morality. If you or I were the only person on earth, then "morality" would consist solely of our "relationship" with ourself. And if we chose to be purely selfish in such a circumstance, there would be nothing wrong with that!

Sounds like Karma, at the very least a quasi-religious belief. But really, is there any empirical evidence that you are more likely to meet a bad end if you are a "selfish jerk"?

I believe that selfish behavior catches up with people based on my own personal experience and based on my reading of history.

That said, I could easily argue the other side of this proposition. I could make a pretty convincing case that what I have said is mistaken and false. I am well aware of bastards who are successful till the day they die, and decent beautiful people who suffer as much as Job. But I think I am correct anyway.

If you choose to disagree with me on this, I can only conclude that it is because you are a knowledgeable and intelligent person who is well aware of why what I am saying appears to be false. But to answer your question, yes, there is empirical evidence to back up my assertion, but it is far from definitive.

And I don't believe the payback mechanism is transcendental or supernatural, so I wouldn't call it "karma" myself. But "karma" is a very good way of looking at it.

Anyway, I think the real problem with your post is that you are too heavily influenced by our modern, Western culture; where the good guy gets the gal and the bad guy gets the shaft. The real world is much different, especially the farther you go outside the West. In most of the world, ruthlessness pays and the bad guys are just as likely to die peacefully in their bed as to end up dancing on the end of a rope, or worse. I would argue that in most of the world, the peace-loving and the meek are the ones most likely to end up with the short end of the stick.

As I said above, I agree with you. And maybe I've got everything a**-backwards on this particular point. I certainly have an open mind about it.

But I still come down on my side: in general, bad guys had better watch their back, and good people will normally harvest more than what they bargained for.

Ex-preacher,

The real ethical relativists and hypocrites are Christians. For them, murdering babies is wrong, unless their god commands it (as in the Old Testament), then it's right.

I think you might be a little over-emphatic here, but you make a most important point here, in your hyperbolic way: the Golden Rule gives us a moral test which we can apply to the precepts of any religion. In this sense, we can talk objectively about the moral contents of a religion, even though morality itself is a man-made, and hence subjective, standard.

And when we do this, we find that the great religions are a mixed bag. Some of their dogmas are moral, some are not, and some are profoundly immoral.

Ucfengr,

What is reason and how do you determine that one course of action is reasonable, and therefore moral and one is not? [ ... ] Now, obviously you don't support the decision to go to war in Iraq, but using your criteria if would be hard to argue that it was an immoral decision. The reality is that there is no objective standard for what is reasonable. In the safe and secure confines of the US, what is reasonable would make no sense in most places in the world.

If we define or assume that "moral" means "help others, and avoid hurting others", then it is possible to discuss ethical dilemmas such as going to war or dealing with problems of social justice.

There will be disagreements as to whom we should be helping, and to what extent we can justify hurting different people, and what trade-offs we are willing to make or even willing to consider reasonable. But there is agreement on the basic underlying principles: help, and don't hurt.

The situation is analogous to running a large corporation. The management (and the shareholders) will all agree on the underlying principle: let's all make a lot of money -- in fact, let's make us much money as we reasonably can! But there will frequently be all kinds of disagreements, and sometimes very profound or even bitter disagreements, on how to actually implement the goal of maximizing profits.

Franklin,

I agree 100% with you.

My discussion of morality is my attempt to provide a rational basis for evaluating the moralities of atheist and Christian alike.

Ludwig,

I respectfully disagree 100% with you.

One can make coherent arguments about not invading Iraq in 2003. But even if one finds the arguments in favor of invasion to be lacking, I must protest your eagerness to dismiss those arguments as illogical or unreasonable.

I, for one, found the arguments to be very compelling at the time. And I find those same arguments to be even more compelling today, including the ones about sharing WMD's with terrorists.

So unless you are willing to dismiss me as a deluded kook, I would like to suggest you take a second look at your rhetoric and perhaps try to see things a little better from the other side's point of view.

Ucfengr,

... [Ludwig's post on Iraq] is an excellent example of my assertion that there is no objective standard for reason. Which leads to the conclusion that it's pretty worthless in determining morality.

Reason is a tool that we use to probe the underlying nature of reality.

Different people will use the probe of reason and reach different conclusions. Partly that is due to different techniques, partly that is due to applying the probe to very different areas.

But reason is reason, and reality is reality. If our subjective attempts to understand reality seem contradictory, then perhaps instead of throwing out the results that we disagree with, we should be attempting to piece everything together in a complementary fashion.

It is like the parable of the blind men and the elephant: I'm holding the trunk, you're grabbing a tusk, Franklin is wrapping his arms around a leg, and Ludwig is poking around under the big guy's tail.

20

Have you ever heard of the rules of logic? Would you agree that they are objective? If not, then in what way are they not objective? Logic *is* the basis of reason (and like it or not, it is also the basis of faith).

If the "rules of logic" led all people to the same solution for an identical problem, then you could say they are objective, but this is obviously not the case. The problem with trying to use logic or reason as a basis for morality is that it is impossible to separate ourselves from our own prejudices and beliefs. They will always influence our reasoning. Using reason and/or logic to try to determine our morality is one of those things that "works on paper" but not in application.

21

What I am trying to say is that morality is not imposed by outside forces, such as God, but is something that each individual has to choose to accept or not.

I would beg to differ. Your morality is the result of the hard work of your parents, backed up by hundreds of years of Western thought, and thousands of years of Judeo-Christian tradition, all outside forces. Apparently, these outside forces did such a good job in imposing these morals that you have completely internalized them, to the point that you think you thought of them yourself, but you didn't.

If we define or assume that "moral" means "help others, and avoid hurting others", then it is possible to discuss ethical dilemmas such as going to war or dealing with problems of social justice.

Why is this morality any more valid than one that says "help your friends and hurt your enemies"? Absent a higher authority, it really isn't, is it?

I believe that selfish behavior catches up with people based on my own personal experience and based on my reading of history.

The problem with relying on history is that history is largely written by the "selfish jerks" who won, not the "selfish jerks" who lost.

22

Sounds like Karma, at the very least a quasi-religious belief. But really, is there any empirical evidence that you are more likely to meet a bad end if you are a "selfish jerk"?

I think you misunderstand the concept of karma.

Anyway, I think the real problem with your post is that you are too heavily influenced by our modern, Western culture; where the good guy gets the gal and the bad guy gets the shaft. The real world is much different, especially the farther you go outside the West. In most of the world, ruthlessness pays and the bad guys are just as likely to die peacefully in their bed as to end up dancing on the end of a rope, or worse.

I think you're too heavily influenced by Western culture's idea of Karma. Karma is direct cause and effect and happens in an instant. It isn't something like "if you help an old lady accross the street today next week you may have better odds of winning the lottery". It's more like "if you help an old lady accross the street today you become a better, healthier, more balanced and human person today".

Yes sometimes people appear to get away with bad things but appearences can be deceptive. Take OJ Simpson. I think he got away with murder. But look carefully at him, he has been a basket case since the murder. While he is free of legal troubles and has more money than most of us will ever have I think his internal life is a living hell. I think this was a direct effect of his decision to let his temper take control that night. If he had restrained himself he would have been a better person today. In fact, even if he was convicted and had served some time I suspect today he would have be a better person having done something at least to attone.

I don't think you can harm others and not harm yourself. A true psychopath may never feel any emotional turmoil or guilt over his actions but then a true psychopath is something less than fully human, which is a pretty serious loss IMO.

So from this perspective karma is inescapable. If you're a normal human harming others will instantly harm yourself. The only way to avoid this is to destroy aspects of yourself that are human.

I'll agree with you this does little for the victims. I'm sure OJ's wife and friend aren't any less dead but this goes from any other type of morality you want to try to sell. It doesn't make Nicole less dead to know that OJ might go to hell after he dies for murder. She is still dead and I'm sure the knife wounds didn't hurt any less when she was alive. Then again no one said karma was the same thing as justice (nor is morality the same thing as justice)

Matthew
It is an objective, undeniable fact that humans are social animals who must interact with other humans just about every day of their lives. This is not merely my subjective opinion, or an over-generalization of my subjective experience. It is a hard, objective fact.

Good point. Morality can be viewed in a very utilitarian manner that is quite objective. Murder should be prohibited because it almost always does more to destroy the greater good (human community) than any individual good that is accomplished. It's interesting that many religious people here are inclined to think morality must be objective but there is nothing wrong with subjectivity. Most people, even very religious ones, do not turn to a rule book when confronted with a moral question but instinctively know where they stand on it.

Subjectivity is as much a part of being human as being objective is. It shouldn't be viewed, IMO, as some type of curse that must be overcome the way Mr. Spock's Vulcans killed all their emotions to become creatures of 'pure logic'.

ucfengr
I would beg to differ. Your morality is the result of the hard work of your parents, backed up by hundreds of years of Western thought, and thousands of years of Judeo-Christian tradition, all outside forces. Apparently, these outside forces did such a good job in imposing these morals that you have completely internalized them, to the point that you think you thought of them yourself, but you didn't.

I'm not sure if you meant it but this is implying that morality is subjective. It exists only as an accident of a particular person's birth. If he had been brought up in some other tradition entirely foreign to this one (say on another planet because it is inaccurate to say that there are no connections between Eastern & Western thought) he would have some totally different morality internalized...just as he would have a different taste in music and food.

Why is this morality any more valid than one that says "help your friends and hurt your enemies"? Absent a higher authority, it really isn't, is it?

The higher authority here would be reality. Who is your enemy and how are they defined as such? If you used some other definition that did not divide everyone into friends and enemies would that make life better or worse?

23

ucfenger:

I disagree. The problem isn't that logic can not be the basis for morality, ucfengr, the problem is that morality can not be simplistically defined. You are ignoring the fact the moral ambiguities clearly exist, and we deal with them everyday. In many cases there is no clear answer, and it doesn't matter whether you apply rules or logic or the dictates of religion, such ambiguities are inescapable, but that doesn't mean that logic is ill equiped to deal with the problem. The fact that different people might come to different conclusions doesn't really prove much of anything, other than the fact that they used different reasoning to arrive at their conclusions. I will admit that this is a kind of subjectivity, but not necessarily in the way that you are applying it.

Your contention that we can't separate ourselves from our beliefs and prejudices is true, but only up to a point. Moral ambiguity is a fact of life, but it is also true that there are many things that are universally agreed upon as bad things. Is there any person on the planet that would agree that large scale nuclear war is a moral solution to anything? Only a sociopath unable to understand what the impact would be on himself and others would agree to that statement. Is that subjective? Perhaps.

Why is this morality any more valid than one that says "help your friends and hurt your enemies"? Absent a higher authority, it really isn't, is it?

Because this sort of morality is inherently short sighted. Your enemy today may be your greatest ally tomorrow.

As I see it, ucfengr, a great deal of morality is based on the fact that we have to make decisions based on incomplete information. If we knew in advance what the ultimate outcome of every decision we made would be, there wouldn't be any moral dilemas (notice the logical basis of this statement?).

That being said, logic and reason must be an intimate part of any moral decision, there is no escaping that fact because there is no escaping moral ambiguity in the face of incomplete knowledge. Morality as defined by religion more often than not codifies logical reasons for choosing certain courses of action based on incomplete knowledge. However, since the logic itself is based on incomplete and imperfect information, the logic isn't perfect either, hence the need to continually apply and reapply reason and logic to moral decisions, and why all attempts to codify morality into a simplistic set of rules will always fail.

24

I think you misunderstand the concept of karma.

Quite possibly, but I don't get the impression that you have a real good grasp of it either.

I'm not sure if you meant it but this is implying that morality is subjective.

I think morality is both objective and subjective.
Objective in that "True Morality" is authored by God, subjective in that mankind is in rebellion against God and so tends set up their own morality that is largely in conflict with God's. Even Christians do this to some extent.

As to the rest of your post, I am not seeing how it responds to my post, so I will refrain from additional comment on it.

25

I don't think you can harm others and not harm yourself.

Neither do I, but this is a dangerous basis for morality. It is very easy to rationalize harmful behaviour; people are always doing that. Just think of homosexuality!

Besides, this puts us in the centre. We should not harm others, because it's good for us. In a sense, this is true even from a theistic point of view (since following God will make us happier than not doing so). The problem is that there is no drive to do anything that seems to be not good for oneself. Therefore, this road ultimately ends in hedonism.

26

Quite possibly, but I don't get the impression that you have a real good grasp of it either.

Perhaps others here more familir with the concept could help untangle the question. I'm pretty sure I'm right, though, karma does not simply mean good things will happen to you if you do good things and vice versa. People are not idiots and it wouldn't have taken thousands of years for people in the east to have noticed the evil person doesn't always end up getting executed and the good person isn't always rewarded with riches and fame.

I think morality is both objective and subjective.
Objective in that "True Morality" is authored by God, subjective in that mankind is in rebellion against God and so tends set up their own morality that is largely in conflict with God's. Even Christians do this to some extent.

In what way is our morality largely in rebellion against God? Most of our day to day morality appears to be quite in line with the Golden Rule and variations onit (which I would imagine you think is at lest in line with God's desires). Ask people what is the right thing to do and it isn't often you get answers like "well if you can get away with it, shoot the bastard that cut you off". Yes we fall into disagreements on the more abstract, public policy questions but these are also more removed from most of our day to day lives.

27

You are ignoring the fact the moral ambiguities clearly exist, and we deal with them everyday.

I don't think that moral ambiguities do exist. I think we always know the "right thing" to do, but in many cases we choose not to do it because it would be too painful or it would interfere with our own pleasure.

In what way is our morality largely in rebellion against God? Most of our day to day morality appears to be quite in line with the Golden Rule and variations onit (which I would imagine you think is at lest in line with God's desires).

Really? Really? You can look at the world around you and come to the conclusion that they way we behave is largely compliant with the "Golden Rule"? I am surprised they let you have an outside internet connection in the Kingdom of Rainbows and Fluffy Bunnies, where you apparently live.

28

Reason is not sufficient for any morality, contra most "rational" atheists. Reason is only a tool applied to the raw materials of first principles, which are axiomatic in nature and cannot be proven or disproven.

For example, one cannot prove or disprove that one is not in a life-like dream, Matrix style. Therefore, my belief that I am sitting at a computer here and not simply dreaming an illusion that I am sitting here at my computer is an axiomatic first principle.

These first principles constitute "religion" for everyone who has a belief. This means atheists have "religion" just as Muslims have "religion" or Christians have "religion." The only thing that differs is their first principles, but all are equally unprovable.

So please stop saying that reason alone is the basis for morality. That's like saying a hammer is the basis for a chair. It's the hammer PLUS wood. It's reason PLUS your religious beliefs.

The interesting thing about atheists in Western society is that they cannot help but stand on the shoulders of past generations of Christians when it comes to morality. They have no choice but are often unaware of the influence. They are raised in a society that has been influenced by Christianity (and continues to be) and they are the benefactors of this religious culture which is contiguous with older Christian cultures. It's historical reality (provided we believe we're not in an illusion) and they cannot escape the influence, whether for better or for worse. This is why Christopher Hutchins knows it's not right to shoot the man who just cut him off in traffic. He obviously cannot articulate an atheist basis for morality (because there is none) and he's showing it.

He's actually doing worse than most of my college roommates for crying out loud!

Matthew Goggins:
But then the next step in my argument is that although morality is a man-made thing, there are perfectly objective reasons for taking this man-made thing and choosing to make it the basis of our ethical lives.

What are the objective reasons?

It is an objective, undeniable fact that humans are social animals who must interact with other humans just about every day of their lives. This is not merely my subjective opinion, or an over-generalization of my subjective experience. It is a hard, objective fact.

Next, it is my considered opinion that a purely selfish person is going to provoke a harsh backlash, and that this inevitable backlash is a strong reason to avoid being purely selfish in life. If I am correct, then that too would be an objective reason to embrace the morality of the Golden Rule.

So for you, following the Golden Rule is contingent on it working for your benefit, namely that not having to deal with a backlash.

But you have not proven that a negative-for-you backlash is inevitable, so what if it wasn't? Namely, people (or groups of people) who have large amounts of power wouldn't be afraid of a backlash; for example, a society that destroys black or Jewish children wouldn't have anything to fear from the children or black/Jewish minorities.

If Nazi Germany didn't expand its genocide beyond its borders, they probably wouldn't have felt a worldwide backlash. But it seems like that genocide is legitimate moral activity because it benefits those in power when there is no backlash.

And there might be little backlash because of widespread opinions like in Aztec society when virtually no one thought human sacrifice was a big deal. But an atheist could not say it was. They could only say they wouldn't do it--wait, they probably would though if they had the power not to fear a backlash.

So in the end, it comes down again to Nietzsche's Will To Power ideology, where there is no right or wrong, there is only power to impose your equally valid (and thus equally invalid) morality on those who are weaker, usually at their expense.

If morality is really contingent on its benefits to those in power, society will truly degenerate over time because people are selfish and have differing abilities which will translate to power over time.

I would argue that the only reason society has (imperfectly) resisted total degeneration is due to 1) common grace, by which God restrains evil from both Christian and non-Christians, and 2) the influence of Christian principles (imperfectly but still there) on society.

It is by common grace that the vestiges of these Christian dogma are a part of contemporary atheist historicity and they are the only things that allows atheists to be really kind, decent people who are often more moral that Christians.

But many atheists consciously cut off themselves from continuing influence of Christianity as a religious system. Because of their historical proximity to Christian beliefs, they still have gut feelings about morality which were originally Christian second or tertiary principles, but now are consciously detached to the Christian first principles which made them objective and thus binding due to the Christian belief in Judgment.

Morality for atheists is therefore not binding on everyone, but merely a preference that seems to work out the best in real life. It really does.

But if these second principles remain untethered to Christian first principles, namely objective, binding morality based on the reality of God's character, society will gradually "prefer" themselves into the destruction of the weak, i.e. Nietzsche's Will To Power.

It has happened before throughout history in different localities, and is happening today with respect to the unborn, physically disabled, mentally ill, racial minorities, North Koreans etc.

What do you think of my basic points concerning the continuing historical influence of Christian morality upon secular moralities and the consequences of rejecting Christian first principles on atheist moralities in a selfish world?

29

Besides, this puts us in the centre. We should not harm others, because it's good for us. In a sense, this is true even from a theistic point of view (since following God will make us happier than not doing so). The problem is that there is no drive to do anything that seems to be not good for oneself. Therefore, this road ultimately ends in hedonism.

To a degree this is true even more of many theistic centered moralities. At the most simplistic level, take Jack Chic tracks for example, morality is quite selfish. You should do X because God is big, powerful and mean and he will hurt you if you don't. Therefore you're doing X for essentially selfish reasons. What exactly is the 72 virgins in paradise about (from Islam) but a type of hedonism centered on the self?

I think, though, that the reality based morality discussed here limits that danger to a degree. After a certain point it is very hard to care about yourself if you are compassionate towards others. I don't mean that you have no regard at all for yourself but you can lose yourself in it. At that point where is the hedonism? If you lost your self then who is there to indulge?

ucfengr
Really? Really? You can look at the world around you and come to the conclusion that they way we behave is largely compliant with the "Golden Rule"? I am surprised they let you have an outside internet connection in the Kingdom of Rainbows and Fluffy Bunnies, where you apparently live.

There's a difference between having a morality and following it. Most people, most of the time know what is the right thing to do. YOu say that yourself in the first paragraph of post 27. I would go a step further, most of the time they do the right thing. It doesn't take many wrong things to cause a mess and since just about everyone will do a few wrong things we are going to have lots of messes and many of them quite bad. However I think as bad as things are it is only a fraction of what we would see if people were not largely compliant with the Golden Rule.

giggling
So please stop saying that reason alone is the basis for morality. That's like saying a hammer is the basis for a chair. It's the hammer PLUS wood. It's reason PLUS your religious beliefs.

Take ucfengr's first line of post 27:

I don't think that moral ambiguities do exist. I think we always know the "right thing" to do,...

This implies to me a very subjective morality. We humans are only sort of good at reasoning. What you describe, building truth out of axiomatic 'first beliefs' is very problematic. We all have a lot of trouble doing this. It takes years of schooling to do this with mathematics where the 'first beliefs' are not that complicated and the reasoning very clear cut. If we had to reason our moral decisions from first beliefs we would be in a lot of trouble. I certainly wouldn't like life very much if every day was like a hundred college calculus final exams.

If people 'just know' what is right then that's not objective reality. I objectively reason that for a right triangle a^2 + b^2 = c^2. I subjectively know that ice cream tastes pretty good. You may objectively deduce that ice cream tastes good. You may study how human taste buds are sensitive to the taste of sugar and sugar triggers endorphines in the brain releasing pleasure inducing chemicals etc. But if you want to know if something tastes good it's easier to just try it.

This is why Christopher Hutchins knows it's not right to shoot the man who just cut him off in traffic. He obviously cannot articulate an atheist basis for morality (because there is none) and he's showing it.

But even the Romans knew before Christianity that it was wrong to shoot a guy just for cutting you off in traffic. Even going as deep as the Book of Genesis it seems like Adam and Eve knew it was wrong to eat the fruit even though the fruit supposedly gave them the knowledge of good and evil! Did they already have it!? Perhaps Hitchens cannot articulate the basis for morality not because he is afraid to acknowledge that we needed a thousand years or so of Christian influence not to kill annoying people we meet in public, perhaps he cannot articulate it for the same reason he cannot articulate why we find certain flavors tasteful or distasteful or why we cry at love stories and laugh at comedies...it is fundamental to the human conditition.

So for you, following the Golden Rule is contingent on it working for your benefit, namely that not having to deal with a backlash.

If Nazi Germany didn't expand its genocide beyond its borders, they probably wouldn't have felt a worldwide backlash.

Well we have a real life example. The USSR conducted the functional equilivant of genocide within its borders and within the borders of countries it influenced. It was, however, able to contain its geneocide enough to avoid a direct 'backlash' that wiped Nazi Germany off of the newspaper and into the history books.

At the end the Soviet bloc rotted from the inside. Where was the 'will to power' then? There was no backlash. No armies invaded from accross the borders to avenge those unjustly killed and imprisoned. On the contrary, foreign nations were often ignorant of the victims (often willfully so). Yet there was a backlash, it was self induced. If Nazi Germany had never been defeated, it too would have eventually felt its own self-induced backlash. (You may recall at the end of the War in Europe Germany did induce needless suffering on itself when Hitler insisted the army fight to the last man, pulling even children into the armed forces. Hitler's final orders for the military to turn on Germany's own industrial base and destroy it were not carried out, but still even then you see quite a bit of self-inflicted pain)

Like OJ but on a larger scale, though, the ex-communist world is still recovering from this genocide that it supposedly 'got away with'. In the end it is folly to think you are some type of god seperate from the rest of creation. What you do to others you do to yourself, which is a rather obvious truth if you think about it AND quite in line with what Jesus said IMO.

30

#21
The accompanying map depicts "The No Zone." This is the region surrounding the United States in which Democrats have forbidden oil exploration.

I thought it was Jeb Bush who got his big brother to go along with making Florida a 'No Zone'.

The accompanying map depicts "The No Zone." This is the region surrounding the United States in which Democrats have forbidden oil exploration. Take, for example, ANWR. The Alaskan wildlife refuge is an immense property. To put it into its proper scale, if ANWR was the size of a football field, the requested oil exploration area is the size of a postage stamp.

Errr then why does it seem like all of Alaska is covered by the map's red 'no zone'? It sounds like the 'no zone' should barely make a pixil.

31

Ucfengr,

If the "rules of logic" led all people to the same solution for an identical problem, then you could say they are objective, but this is obviously not the case.

I think most disagreements about logical arguments stem from disagreements over the premises used, not over the logical rules that ought to be followed.

That is not to say that a person will never commit a logical fallacy. It's just that such fallacies are usually relatively easy for other people to detect and reject, and you can often get the original person to backtrack on the fallacious logic once you point it out to him.

But even if fallacious logic were a widespread, intractable, and necessary aspect of human thought and dialogue, we can still figure out rules of logic that are fairly simply and very useful. Then you and I and Joe Carter and Christopher Hitchens can stipulate that all further discussion of morality must adhere to these rules, under penalty of ridicule and/or rejection. In fact, I believe that stipulation has already been tacitly made.

[Matthew said:] "What I am trying to say is that morality is not imposed by outside forces, such as God, but is something that each individual has to choose to accept or not."

I would beg to differ. Your morality is the result of the hard work of your parents, backed up by hundreds of years of Western thought, and thousands of years of Judeo-Christian tradition, all outside forces. Apparently, these outside forces did such a good job in imposing these morals that you have completely internalized them, to the point that you think you thought of them yourself, but you didn't.

I've pointed out in previous comment threads that my morality, and the culture of the U.S. and the West in general, has grown out of ancient Judeo-Christian traditions. I've also emphasized that the Christian church itself was a very important sponsor of and intellectual force behind the scientific revolution. Even though the church occasionally disapproved (usually only temporarily) of some of science's more revolutionary results, science as we know it could not have developed without the historical contributions of the Christian West.

However, I've also pointed out (in other comment threads) that Christianity itself has borrowed heavily from the traditions that preceded it, including those of the Greeks, Romans, Celts, Persians, and Egyptians (not to mention the fact that it is, after all, a Jewish sect!). And a lot of the shared elements of all traditions seem to come from the ways our brains have been hard-wired by the processes of evolution over many hundreds of thousands of years.

But just as important as all the history is the fact that I have taken a step back from all that. I have chosen to look at my morality (and your morality) and examine/challenge its assumptions. I have looked for an objective (or at least an apparently objective) basis, and I believe I have found one.

So although I grew up to a large extent absorbing the morality around me based on the authority of the adults in my life, I have made a conscious effort to go beyond that (due in no small measure to the logical and ethical shortcomings of the morality that even the Bible has to offer).

If I had to summarize the objective basis for morality, it would go something like this: Life is a game where one is free to cheat or play by the rules (where the rules have been set, by mutual consensus, to allow everyone a fair chance to play and "win"). We should choose to play by the rules because that is the only way to earn and keep the respect of others, and that is the only way to earn our own respect.

While I agree with that my morality is the product of a moral evolution involving many civilizations over several millenia (or even a lot longer than that), I can still talk about in objective terms, in the same way I can talk about engineering or economics or carpentry in objective terms, even though those fields are cultural products as well.

Why is this morality ["help, don't hurt"] any more valid than one that says "help your friends and hurt your enemies"? Absent a higher authority, it really isn't, is it?

The purpose of morality is to serve as a guideline, a set of rules for our behavior. If we want to morally engage other people and make moral claims on the behavior of others, then we have to embrace some version of my morality or the Golden Rule.

Now some people, or groups of people, might not be concerned about engaging others morally or making moral claims. And I agree with you that I have no binding authority to insist that others agree with me or act the way I choose.

But if I am dealing with someone who rejects, on principle, the morality of "help, don't hurt", then that person has no moral claim on me and I can deal with the person in any way I deem appropriate. So the non-binding nature of my morality is not a pragmatic problem. In fact, I might be more attuned to or ready to deal with selfish/evil people than someone who assumes his morality has the imprimatur of God.

And please note that the full-blown version of my morality is as follows: "Help others, and avoid hurting others."

If I am in the ethical dilemma of determining how to deal with an enemy, my morality allows me to hurt an enemy as a tradeoff, in order to protect someone who is threatened by my enemy (including, possibly, myself). But hurting an enemy is a last resort -- engaging the enemy morally would be better, if possible (and if prudent).

The problem with relying on history is that history is largely written by the "selfish jerks" who won, not the "selfish jerks" who lost.

Amen to that. Part of the fun of reading history is trying to guess how much of it has anything to do with what actually happened.

Boonton,

Thank you for the discussion of karma. I don't know who (you or Ucfengr) is right, but since I agree with what both of you have to say about it, the point is moot for my purposes.

[Matthew said:] "It is an objective, undeniable fact that humans are social animals who must interact with other humans just about every day of their lives. This is not merely my subjective opinion, or an over-generalization of my subjective experience. It is a hard, objective fact."

Good point. Morality can be viewed in a very utilitarian manner that is quite objective. Murder should be prohibited because it almost always does more to destroy the greater good (human community) than any individual good that is accomplished.

Although the utilitarian argument ("Murder is extremely harmful to society, so it should be illegal and immoral.") is part of what I am saying when I am talking about the bad consequences of a selfish morality, it is not at the heart or core of my argument.

What I am saying is that it doesn't even make sense to say that murder is moral, because morality is how we choose to interact with others, and no one would want us to murder him. So "help, don't hurt" is not the result of some profound philosophical exercise -- it is the only definition of morality which includes other people that could possibly make sense.

So I am defining morality to be the Golden Rule, and then looking for an objective basis (such as utilitarian considerations) that could command our adoption of it.

And the most compelling reason I came up with for choosing a reciprocal morality over a selfish "morality" is that a reciprocal morality is the only way we can be worthy of moral treatment from others, or even ourselves. Even if we could get way with being selfish, such a life would force us to be a sociopath, and that is an objectively poor choice (and utilitarian concerns are probably not even the biggest reason why).

Ucfengr,

I think morality is both objective and subjective. Objective in that "True Morality" is authored by God, subjective in that mankind is in rebellion against God and so tends set up their own morality that is largely in conflict with God's.

If one takes your God and replaces it with "the objective circumstances of the human condition", then your view of morality appears to be largely identical with mine.

And if you take "the objective basis for morality" from my comments and make that the definition of "God", then you could call me a theist. And if you make it the definition of "Jesus", you could call me a Christian! :)

Giggling,

These first principles constitute "religion" for everyone who has a belief. This means atheists have "religion" just as Muslims have "religion" or Christians have "religion." The only thing that differs is their first principles, but all are equally unprovable.

Excellent point.

I would only disagree with your implication that all first principles are objectively equivalent in terms of being worthy choices.

Some first principles are objectively better than others: helping is better than sadism; avoiding harm to others is better than not avoiding it; truth is better than falsehood.

These principles might not be prima facie objectively better when one is operating in a Kantian metaphysical mode. But persuasive arguments for the superiority of the principles are not hard to find.

The interesting thing about atheists in Western society is that they cannot help but stand on the shoulders of past generations of Christians when it comes to morality. They have no choice but are often unaware of the influence.

When it comes to the most vocal and "evangelical" atheists, such as Hitchens, Dawkins, Sam Harris, and others, your objection is largely a red herring. No prominent atheist downplays the influence of the legacy of Christianity -- but he is likely to point out that the legacy cuts both ways, for good and evil.

[Christopher Hitchens] obviously cannot articulate an atheist basis for morality (because there is none) and he's showing it.

I've noticed that Mr. Hitchens often likes to attack Christianity (and other religions) a lot more than he likes to build an affirmative case for the basis of an atheistic or God-neutral morality. So you raise a good point.

But your point only goes so far: the basis for his morality is the Golden Rule, and I doubt he is less capable than I am of explaining the objective basis for it.

[Matthew said:] "Next, it is my considered opinion that a purely selfish person is going to provoke a harsh backlash, and that this inevitable backlash is a strong reason to avoid being purely selfish in life. If I am correct, then that too would be an objective reason to embrace the morality of the Golden Rule."

So for you, following the Golden Rule is contingent on it working for your benefit, namely that not having to deal with a backlash.

As I admitted and explained to Ucfengr, I am not entirely convinced that the Golden Rule works for one's selfish benefit, and I can think of many instances where in fact it doesn't.

But of course, I am not arguing that the positive effects (from a selfish point of view) of the Golden Rule are the reason one should adopt it. To the contrary, I explicitly said that such positive effects are at best only a secondary reason for choosing to follow the Golden Rule.

The main reason for adhering to the Golden Rule is because that is the only way to honestly earn the moral consideration of others, and thus not be a sociopathic monster.

So in the end, it comes down again to Nietzsche's Will To Power ideology, where there is no right or wrong, there is only power to impose your equally valid (and thus equally invalid) morality on those who are weaker, usually at their expense.

You are raising valid and highly cogent points here, and throughout your critique.

But the truth is, there is no higher power, and the stars do not weep over our sins.

While brute power is certainly one way to assert my morality over someone else's, most of the time that is not necessary, due to the widespread popularity of at least some version of the Golden Rule in just about every corner of the planet.

And since wielding power is both expensive and morally corrupting, I would much prefer to use moral suasion and logical reasoning as my weapons.

If morality is really contingent on its benefits to those in power, society will truly degenerate over time because people are selfish and have differing abilities which will translate to power over time.

Hold on there, Giggling.

Is morality really strictly contingent on its benefits to the ruling class?

Maybe you are right that all civilized societies are doomed to cycle into a period of fat, happy decadence and decay. But isn't it just as likely that if the elites lead by example, the rest of society will embrace the Golden Rule and all that it entails?

What do you think of my basic points concerning the continuing historical influence of Christian morality upon secular moralities and the consequences of rejecting Christian first principles on atheist moralities in a selfish world?

I think you have made a serious, thoughtful critique. You have laid out the case that Hitchens and Dawkins and all the rest have to address in order to be taken seriously.

There is no denying that an atheist perspective places a lot of responsibility on the individual. And it is not always clear that individuals are up to the task.

However, while we get to choose our morality, we don't get to choose the nature of the cosmos, and if there ain't no God out there, wishing won't make it so.

And if atheists raise their children to be good little Golden Rulers, I have no reason to believe that they should be less successful in inculcating respect for others than Christians or other religious folk.

Indeed, my own belief is that the atheist argument for morality, inasmuch as its God-neutrality gives it a non-sectarian appeal and foundation, is much superior to many of the traditional religious arguments for morality.

32

But the truth is, there is no higher power, and the stars do not weep over our sins.

A valid point, another question though is so what if there is a higher power? If you're asserting that morality is simply whatever the will is of the higher power then you're just playing a variation on might makes right. The 'will to power' here simply belongs to the beign with superpowers rather than an exceptional man or woman. The Greeks & Romans had plenty of higher powers but they did not consider them the source of morality. Quite often it was questionable whether their morality was even equal to the morality of the typical person.

Fundamentally just about everyone seems to have an internal sense of what's right and what's wrong. We will argue all day here about abortion, stem cells, Iraq etc. but if we bumped into each other at a Starbucks we would all be polite to each other and have no qualms about treating each other decently. I don't think we feel this way because we are scared of law enforcement. Since we have very different beliefs about religion it isn't because we have tediously deduced a moral code from a set of axioms that we all agree on. We certainly all do not share the same Biblical point of view. So why is this common ground so easy for us to find that we are not even surprised that we share it? You can try to say it is because we share a common Christian influenced history but somehow I sense a handful of people who bumped into each other in Rome or China would share this same sense of common ground. I think it is instinctual to being human.

Our instincts are usually good but there are some areas where they can lead to bad. As I pointed out if everyone is a little bad that adds up to a lot of bad and a messed up world but it's only a fraction messed up than it would be if we didn't share a common ground.

Since we do not reason out this common ground I would suggest it is subjective and that's not a bad thing. Morality can be reasoned out, Kant did it. Have you ever read him? It is almost impossible and if you had to go through such an exercise in logic to figure out what the right thing to do is in any particular situation you'd probably go insane.

33

Some first principles are objectively better than others: helping is better than sadism;

Feel free to ignore my inane observation here, but if helping is better than sadism, and your objective is to help a masochist's subjective desire to be the object of sadism, doesn't that nullify your logic?

34

giggling tells us that there are "Christian first principles, namely objective, binding morality."

Instead of dwelling in abstractions, let's put some flesh on that.

Please answer the following questions. By "always" I mean "universally, absolutely, objectively, and applying to all people in all cultures in all times under all circumstances."

1. Is lying always wrong?

2. Is killing an infant always wrong?

3. Is committing genocide always wrong?

4. Is polygamy always wrong?

5. Is incest always wrong?

6. Is slavery always wrong?

7. Is capital punishment right ot wrong?

8. Is stealing always wrong?

9. Is breaking the Sabbath always wrong?

10. Is killing an unborn baby always wrong (assuming that the mother's life is not in danger)?

I invite all Christians to answer these questions.

35

That does indeed generate a mess if you define helping as trying to satisfy other people's subjective desires. Should the be the only definition of help that we use?

36

Boonton:
This implies to me a very subjective morality. We humans are only sort of good at reasoning. What you describe, building truth out of axiomatic 'first beliefs' is very problematic. We all have a lot of trouble doing this. It takes years of schooling to do this with mathematics where the 'first beliefs' are not that complicated and the reasoning very clear cut. If we had to reason our moral decisions from first beliefs we would be in a lot of trouble. I certainly wouldn't like life very much if every day was like a hundred college calculus final exams.

Yes, we're not good at being reasonable or consistent or thoughtful. So...what? That just means we're not very consistent or reasonable or thoughtful with our religious beliefs. Of course we use heuristics. My point still stands concerning the basis of our conclusions being reason PLUS first principles (and derivative principles if we're thoughtful), and that those first principles are unprovable and thus equally "religious."

You might be assuming I have a certain idea of what these first principles look like. But I don't: "abortion is wrong" could be a first principle (i.e. taken by faith with no other more fundamental principles underlying the belief) or a tertiary principle (first P: God made humans, first P: fetuses are human, second P: wrong to kill humans, third P: abortion kills humans, fourth P: abortion is wrong, or whatever your thought process is)

In other words, the fact that we usually don't access those first principles when we think simply means a lot of our beliefs are, practically speaking, first principles we take by faith. I'm just calling them what they are and leveling the field for so called rational atheists and so-called irrational religious people.

Perhaps Hitchens cannot articulate the basis for morality not because he is afraid to acknowledge that we needed a thousand years or so of Christian influence not to kill annoying people we meet in public, perhaps he cannot articulate it for the same reason he cannot articulate why we find certain flavors tasteful or distasteful or why we cry at love stories and laugh at comedies...it is fundamental to the human conditition.

This is what I call a cop-out. First, you equate "finding flavors tasteful" with "not killing annoying people" supposedly because moral (not killing) and a-moral (preference for flavors) things are both "fundamental to the human condition." Well, here you simply asserted the equation, but you'd have to argue that because many humans do kill annoying people and have done so. So it doesn't seem as fundamental to the human condition as tasting flavors.

Secondly, what you've done with this "fundamental to the human condition" is simply give a name to your religious beliefs. You believe certain things are "fundamental to the human condition;" therefore, you have an anthropology. But there are many competing anthropologies out there, all of which consist in or rest on higher order principles (ultimately first principles) whether or not they are consciously invoked. So, Boonton, you do have a religion, which I would characterize (and you can reject the characterization) as humanistic.

I'm not making a moral evaluation of your religion (for now). But I do point out that you have one, though it's not theistic or deistic.

At the end the Soviet bloc rotted from the inside. Where was the 'will to power' then? There was no backlash. No armies invaded from accross the borders to avenge those unjustly killed and imprisoned. On the contrary, foreign nations were often ignorant of the victims (often willfully so). Yet there was a backlash, it was self induced.

You just made the argument for me. There WAS a backlash which was induced by the suffering people within the USSR (I don't know the history, but I'm taking your word for it). Also, I'm not an expert, but I would say that the arms race with the U.S. had some effect.

But nowhere do I claim that the Will To Power ideology always succeeds. Obviously it doesn't because there are vestiges of TRUE objective morality that motivate people to fight against false notions that their suffering is not objectively, truly wrong in moral reality but a mere preference among other subjective preferences. I only claim that absent affirmation of true, objective morality in favor of morality being subjective and man-made, over time rejectors of objective morality will tend to the Will To Power ideology. And we see that today in infanticide, euthanasia, and a host of other issues, some of which you may agree are moral problems, others which you would not.

Matthew Goggins:
I would only disagree with your implication that all first principles are objectively equivalent in terms of being worthy choices.

Some first principles are objectively better than others: helping is better than sadism; avoiding harm to others is better than not avoiding it; truth is better than falsehood.

These principles might not be prima facie objectively better when one is operating in a Kantian metaphysical mode. But persuasive arguments for the superiority of the principles are not hard to find.

Then what you call first principles are not really first principles, because you are evaluating the worthiness of those "first principles" based on more fundamental principles, which I would call your real first principles.

If we judge between standards, there must be a higher standard by which we are judging.

When it comes to the most vocal and "evangelical" atheists, such as Hitchens, Dawkins, Sam Harris, and others, your objection is largely a red herring. No prominent atheist downplays the influence of the legacy of Christianity -- but he is likely to point out that the legacy cuts both ways, for good and evil.

You are right when you say they generally would not downplay the influence of Christianity in both positive and negative ways; I do submit to you that they downplay the influence of Christianity in one particular way: its influence in preventing a lapse of morality such that Western society can reject fundamental Christian principles while holding on to implications of those principles (e.g. tertiary principles) and society will still be okay.

I would argue that society would only be okay for a while if it remains untethered to certain objective moral truths because it takes a while for people to question things once taken for granted, like Why we shouldn't kill old people? But eventually, absent people promoting these objective moral truths, people forget and we get stuff like euthanasia or killing people who are no longer useful but "waste" resources (not that you hold that moral "preference").

Of course, I do agree with you and Boonton as well that moral truths have been evident and believed before Christianity's birth. But this is because of common grace and the idea of progressive revelation, and no society is older than God =D

But your point only goes so far: the basis for his morality is the Golden Rule, and I doubt he is less capable than I am of explaining the objective basis for it.

I'm not so sure he is more capable than you. So far you've been much more persuasive than he has.

To the contrary, I explicitly said that such positive effects are at best only a secondary reason for choosing to follow the Golden Rule.

I'm sorry for missing that. My bad. =\

The main reason for adhering to the Golden Rule is because that is the only way to honestly earn the moral consideration of others, and thus not be a sociopathic monster.

Hmm... okay, that makes sense. I guess my thoughts on the Golden Rule is that it is interesting because it's so dependent on other values and first principles and tertiary principles that essentially its subjectivity is its downfall.

For example, Hutchins has made it a mantra to say that he wishes Christians would just leave him alone. But abiding by the Golden Rule, Christians would not be moral if they did leave him alone as he wished because of their other beliefs. In other words, Christians would not want other people in their position to leave them alone, so Christians don't leave other people alone (for that and other reasons, too).

So the Golden Rule has huge limitations due to its inherent subjectivity (which is I guess why our (classically, not politically) liberal society likes it so much).

But the truth is, there is no higher power, and the stars do not weep over our sins.

Interesting statement. Is that a first principle for you, or is it derived from the religion of empiricism, i.e. the only valid evidence is discernible through the physical senses?

While brute power is certainly one way to assert my morality over someone else's, most of the time that is not necessary, due to the widespread popularity of at least some version of the Golden Rule in just about every corner of the planet.

True. Though we would differ as to the source of that consensus, and its stability over time =)

And since wielding power is both expensive and morally corrupting, I would much prefer to use moral suasion and logical reasoning as my weapons.

Fortunately for us, your moral preference is in style, for now. But how fair is it for you to call actions contingent on other equally valid first principles "corrupting." Shouldn't you instead say you don't like that flavor of ice cream, that it's simply "different" rather than "corrupting"? "Corrupting" seems like a harsh characterization of another person's preference. "Your preference for strawberry ice cream is corrupting!"

It seems that you must redefine the term "wrong" as what is ordinarily meant by "different than mine."

Hold on there, Giggling.

Is morality really strictly contingent on its benefits to the ruling class?

Maybe you are right that all civilized societies are doomed to cycle into a period of fat, happy decadence and decay. But isn't it just as likely that if the elites lead by example, the rest of society will embrace the Golden Rule and all that it entails?

That depends on your first and tertiary principles comprising your anthropology or beliefs about human nature. Christians have the doctrine of original sin as a part of their anthropology, namely relational creatures made in the image of a relational God but corrupted by sin and in need of salvation they cannot achieve on their own due to their corruption and which God must impart by his mercy and has done so in the person and work of Jesus who was born 2000 years ago and lives still today to make peace between men and God and other men which will be fleshed out in consummation at the Second Coming of Jesus, the Day of Judgment.

Your anthropology (I don't know how developed it is) probably consists (at least in part) in a picture of human beings as highly evolved animals with equal propensities of doing good versus evil (however the distinction between good and evil came about), so theoretically your belief in the chances of society to adhere to the Golden Rule (somehow modified and appended with more religious first principles due to the limitations which I have pointed out) is valid and rational.

I just think the historical evidence for the majority of the world and time shows a much worse picture of humanity than half good, half bad as it theoretically should aggregate over time. And we've been at it for enough time, according to macroevolutionists.

And if atheists raise their children to be good little Golden Rulers, I have no reason to believe that they should be less successful in inculcating respect for others than Christians or other religious folk.

Indeed, my own belief is that the atheist argument for morality, inasmuch as its God-neutrality gives it a non-sectarian appeal and foundation, is much superior to many of the traditional religious arguments for morality.

First, I would say that an atheist account of morality is not really God-neutral but rather anti-God (or at least anti-Bible's God) because it denies the reality of God as the foundation of morality and doesn't give him credit where credit is due. I guess it's "superior" if "superior" means "appealing to diverse people" rather than "accurate." But I guess for atheists there's no target =P

Second, Christians believe that by common grace (a.k.a. God's kindness) atheists/agnostics can come to prefer moral truths that are objective, though they would not say they are. By living by these truths, atheists can be relatively decent people and make a relatively decent world that seems not to need God.

But that world in my view is unstable at best in its moral achievement, and subject to evil (and joy) that humans don't even have the capacity to appreciate--which might be the real cause of humanistic optimism, that goodness and evil cannot be appreciated as much as they ought to be. What do you think about our capacity to appreciate?

On the other hand, Christian optimism is grounded upon a God who cannot fail in his plans to direct history to the good of his people and his own glory, i.e. that he would get the credit that is due to him.

So your salvation depends on whether you believe that you and the world need a savior. Don't hate on God if he allows that truth to become evident in your own life and in the world. It happened in my life, and now I'm glad it did; otherwise I wouldn't know Him as I do.

Boonton:
Since we have very different beliefs about religion it isn't because we have tediously deduced a moral code from a set of axioms that we all agree on. We certainly all do not share the same Biblical point of view. So why is this common ground so easy for us to find that we are not even surprised that we share it?

Well, Christians believe common ground is easy to find because of God's kindness in giving common grace to the world so that evil is reined in as a sign of God's mercy to even a rebellious world. Common grace preceded Christianity, but not God :)

And you're right in that we use heuristics when making choices. But ultimately even our heuristics are grounded upon some principles we assume, namely that heuristics and their limited moral clarity (trace-ability to first principles) is okay in some sense. And we have different reasons for believing those things, etc.

But you are right in that we use shortcuts. Someone may believe abortion is wrong as a first principle. For others, that belief is a product of secondary or tertiary principles. Regardless, the moral position is moral or immoral because a position's morality doesn't depend upon derivation from a particular hierarchical level of principle (e.g. first, second, third). And that's a moral position as well (one which I believe is biblical), but atheists would need to justify it or simply believe it as a first principle by faith as a part of their personal religion.

Have you ever read [Kant]?

And yes, I have read Kant. I admire his sheer brilliance, but I disagree with his belief that an act's goodness is ruined if you do it because it gives you pleasure. That idea has infiltrated the church and Western society so deeply that we still question it.

On the contrary, the most moral people do not just do the right, but enjoy doing the right. So I think Kant was wrong, and probably miserable because of it. Poor guy. Try not to be like him in that respect.

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ex-preacher:
giggling tells us that there are "Christian first principles, namely objective, binding morality."

???

You assume that objective morality consists in absolute propositions rather than fidelity to God.

Prove your assumption, then I'll answer the questions if I have time.

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That is what I call a cop out.

So there are no absolute propositions?

How about you prove your assumptions first?

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Boonton,

I read some Kant about twenty-five years ago. I would say that it was a