Jack the Bodiless
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Let me get this straight.
Are you a Jew, Christian or Muslim? If not, what are you?
If you believe that the Biblical God is the "normative standard of good", then (to use just one of many, many examples) killing the innocent firstborn sons of a group of people you don't like, purely to demonstrate your own power, is one of the "normative standards of good"?
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Dave: I am a Christian. And, yes, it was good for God to kill the firstborn of Egypt. But God does not consider anyone to be "innocent" in His eyes, nor did God "dislike" anyone based on an arbitrary preference (chocolate vs. vanilla), but based on His eternally good nature and standards (right vs. wrong). And, yes, God did indeed demonstrate His power in this.
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1. Grab an arbitrary standard.
2. Declare it to be absolute.
3. Don't let anyone else do this with any other standard.
4. Declare your standard to be superior because it's (supposedly) non-arbitrary.
5. Declare victory.
Anyone can do that, with ANY standard.
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Dave: actually, someone already has tried to use a chicken as the standard, in order to prove that just any standard will do. It hasn't gone so well for him, in my opinion. You can look up our discussion in the "there is no God period" thread. You cannot hope that an arbitrary standard will somehow form the basis of non-arbitrary knowledge.
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For instance, "because there is no God", morality based on evolution is, by definition, "right", because it is based on fact. Therefore all other systems of morality are both false and arbitrary. You have no case, because your arbitrary God cannot "account for" anything at all: "God did it" is not sufficient.
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Dave: well, if one assume evolution is fact (which is debatable), one only has a historical precedent as a standard of right and wrong. But then why object to the destruction of human life, since it is just a continued manifestation of the historical outworking of "survival of the fittest"? You can't have a moral argument against anything that takes place, because it is simply tomorrow's history - and thus, normative.
Jack the Bodiless
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So the very existence of the Bible and the Church is proof of the existence of the Christian God? They could not exist without God?
But the Koran isn't proof of the existence of Allah, the Vedas aren't proof of the existence of Vishnu, etc etc etc...
Can you not see how arbitrary this is?
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Dave: the existence of the Bible and church is certainly partial proof for the Christian God. I did not argue it as a whole proof - I only argued it in response to the criticism of a prior post. That was its context. I have already argued about the philisophical difficulties I have with the Quran. I will leave you with that to look over (from the criticism, I am assuming you weren't following the whole thread so far).
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Posts: 919 | From: Converted underground reservoir tank. | Registered: Feb 2001 | IP: Logged
anarchocyclist
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I may have missed something, but I didn't promise or attempt to deliver a "defensible" ethical system. As a matter of fact, I tried to avoid that side of the argument altogether.
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Dave: then you have left me with no reason why I SHOULD believe or even care about any of your statements, since you have offered no ethical system that would compel me.
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By "sound" I meant logical. If the conclusion appears to flow logically from the evidence, I will put some stock in it, perhaps even adjust my behavior accordingly. If I conclude that walking off the edge of a cliff will result in grievous bodily harm to myself, I will avoid the edge. Is this morally correct?
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Dave: even if it is logical, why SHOULD I believe in that which is logical? This question requires an ethical answer. Appealing to brute fact or impersonal logic does not constitute an ethical mandate.
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However, in my original post I attempted to support the arguments of others here who conclude that ethical systems based on reasonable evaluation of the evidence are preferable to systems based on the assertion that "God said so, so it must be true." Is God held to any rules of ethics? He must have created them himself, since he created everything. Sounds arbitrary and meaningless to me.
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Dave: again, I find it question-begging to assert that ethical systems must be based on "reasonable evaluation[s] of the evidence." And God's ethical mandates are not arbitrary, but are a reflection of His eternally good, necessary nature.
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Then you do not have an objective standard. To speak of God's morality as objective, as one would speak of, say, gravity is nonsensical. We cannot overcome gravity by behaving in a certain way or by holding certain subjective opinions, yet we can very easily do so with your so-called "objective morals." If morals are forces that govern our behavior, then they would rightly be called 'objective' if we were unable to betray them. But no matter how much semantic sleight-of-hand you wish to use, the fact that we have at least a superficially free choice whether to follow God's moral code (remember, multiple violations don't even guarantee a trip to hell) means the units of said moral code are no more than strong suggestions.
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Dave: [note: this was originally posted by Philosoft, if I am not mistaken. Jlowder's comments will follow]. God's moral norms are NOT like physical laws. Moral norms imply only that there is something "not right" about a certain action - not that an action is physically impossible. Moral norms imply that guilt and punishment will come to lawbreakers - it does not imply that it prevents the existence of lawbreaking. If you want to compare it to physics, then it is more of a "every action elicits an equal and opposite reaction" sort of law.
jlowder
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This is just a series of assertions. I'm still waiting for an argument. You say, "if one abandons the universal God, one must turn to a non-universal. Thus, non-objective." A "non-universal" what? And WHY would automatically be "non-objective"?
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Dave: I was referring to a non-universal standard that carries ontological existence. If one does not ground knowledge in a universal, it must be non-objective because not everything in the universe is subject to it (definitionally) and it might even by SUBJECT to another standard or being itself.
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You still haven't explained what you mean by "universal." I don't want to make any assumptions about what you have in mind. Why can't necessary ethical truths be a "universal"? Necessary ethical truths are based on neither preference nor convention.
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Dave: to speak of necessary ethical truths in the abstract is meaningless. You may say they are universal, but such an abstraction, itself, cannot give rise to ethical knowledge, because it is impersonal by nature. Nor is there anything of ontological existence to back up such ethical truths. Even if such a thing could exist - how could we ever know such rules, or be able to justify them as such?
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I would glady do that if I had an opinion, but I am undecided on which ethical system I think is true.
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Dave: I respect that you haven't come down on such a system yet. However, I think that your inability to actually come to even a preliminary ethical system ought to make you question the validity of the meta-ethical evaluations you've already made.
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Then we need an argument for the existence of the Christian god.
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Dave: I have provided such an argument, more or less. Perhaps I have not made it explicit enough in this particular forum, but I have argued that God exists because His existence is the necessary precondition of knowledge. Specifically in this thread, I have addressed ethical knowledge, and have argued that only God is a non-arbitrary foundation of knowledge because of His ontological nature.
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The problem is that you haven't provided any arguments yet. All you have done is states a series of assertions or ... presuppositions. You haven't shown that "God is the necessary precondition of any knowledge or meaning whatsoever." I'm still waiting for an argument.
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Dave: in transcendental argumentation, one is SUPPOSED to state their presuppositions, and show how they account for different forms of knowledge. I have shown how God's nature lays the foundation for ethical norms. Secondly, I have argued that all non-Christian ethical systems fall apart since they do not have such a foundation, and thus all suffer from the same flaw.
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What good is it? It shows that a favorite theistic argument is fallacious. Consider a parallel from recent scholarship on the problem of evil. In response to so-called "logical" arguments from evil, all the theist has to do in order to refute such arguments is demonstrate that it is logically possible for God and evil to co-exist. Of course, atheists can instead argue (and in fact do argue) that certain facts about evil are more probable on the assumption of atheism than on the assumption of theism. But that is a different argument.
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Dave: a meta-ethical assertion that cannot tie itself to an actual ethical framework and justify its own validity cannot prove or disprove anything.
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Similarly, in response to "logical" moral arguments, all the atheist has to do in order to refute such arguments is demonstrate that it is logically possible that objective morality can exist without God. Of course, theists could argue that certain facts about ethics are more probable on the assumption of theism than on the assumption of atheism. But that is a different argument.
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Dave: probability arguments do not prove or disprove anything at all. Their uncertain nature demonstrates their inherent weakness. That is because to say that something is "probably true" or not, already has presumed (with a greater amount of certainty) a set of criteria that determines what is probable and what is not.
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jlowder: (2) Such ethical systems hold that ethical propositions are objectively true or false -- the truth of ethical propositions is independent of anyone's opinion about such propositions
Dave: but this just repeats your meta-ethical claim. It still begs the question, "what does such a system [that has such a quality] look like?"
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You're still begging the question that I have to answer that question in order to refute your moral argument.
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Dave: well, why indeed should we be compelled to believe in the validity of a meta-ethical assertion that cannot take even the first steps in establishing itself in practice (in an actual ethical framework)? Your "meta-ethics in a vacuum" is senseless.
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Dave: what I mean is this: what does the atheist ground his moral norms in? I then ask myself this: since God does not exist in the atheistic worldview - WHAT DOES exist in the atheist worldview that an atheist might use to ground their ethical norms in? You are going to have to find a "foundation of objective ethics" somewhere in your atheistic worldview.
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What is the foundation of objective ethics? I don't know ... yet. There are some options available to the atheist. However, I would like to focus on your presupposition that an objective ethics needs a foundation. On the assumption that ethics is objective, why should we believe it has or needs a foundation?
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Dave: because "objective ethics" that you have assigned no content to is simply an abstraction. Assuming that such a framework exists, it must be governed by some principles - the "foundation".
Philosoft
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How can a "law" that essentially says, "you should not murder another person" be considered objective? Objective standards of what you should do? Absurd.
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Dave: its absurd because....? Are you simply assuming that "what you should do" is grounded in the subjective person? But then you do not have what "you should do", but what "you prefer to do, while others prefer other things." Your ethical conduct, therefore, is no more meaningful than when I stated "I like chocolate ice cream, and vanilla is bad."
Jlowder
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This only pushes the problem back a step. The problem is not that God could do literally anything. We understand that God acts within His nature. So God is not arbitrary in THAT sense. However, that isn't the question. Rather, the question is, where does the theist find a non-arbitrary moral standard of good? Saying that God will only act or command in accordance with his nature still doesn't show that God's nature is morally good.
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Dave: God's nature is "shown" to be morally good because it is the standard of good. We accept this presuppositionally, because only this presupposition would make possible meaningful conceptions of goodness. That is, it is not arbitrary - because only God can theoretically be in such a position as to be such a standard, since His nature is absolute, eternal, personal, revealed, non-contingent, and since all things come from Him.
Someone7
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Euthyphro by Plato
Atheism, Christian Theism, and Rape by Michael Martin
You need to address these criticisms before you assume morality has anything at all to do with God.
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Dave: seeing as how Plato and Michael Martin do not share common epistemologies or ethical frameworks, I do have to wonder why you offered them forth as possible refutations. Which of these two men is right? They cannot both be. A criticism coming from a defective philosophy cannot serve as a legitimate or compelling refutation to Christianity.
Dave Gadbois
05-13-2002, 12:03 PM
