Thomas Metcalf

Attention, Kent Symanzik.

I am still awaiting your response to my points. If you do not plan to respond to them, please tell me so here so I can cease checking this thread for your answer. I must warn you, however, that I will find your position completely unconvincing if you cannot answer these simple objections.


"You seem to be asking for three different things here. I assume you aren't asking how we atheists know logic to be true, because it's necessarily true, of course. So you must be asking how we know it applies throughout the universe.

"1. Are you asking the atheist to provide a justification of induction? There are always new attempts to digest, but to my knowledge, there is no naturalistic justification of induction. Are you hinting at a transcendental argument from epistemic foundations? If you are, I may offer in response the possibility that the atheist believe in Epistemo, a non-god whose existence causes epistemic foundations to obtain.

"2. As for ethics, of course there are several secular ethical theories. To adopt some forms theism actually removes one's ethical footing, especially if one adopts utilitarianism or divine command theory. Are you familiar with transcendental moral argument from evil or with the Euthyphro dilemma?

"3. It is patently false that the atheist 'worldview' cannot countenance abstract universals. You are correct that conceptualism faces some difficulties, but one could be an atheist who believes in Plato's heaven, or, of course, a nominalist of any stripe. Of course, I believe conceptualism may also be defended fairly plausibly."

Thank you for your consideration.

Marz Blak

Hello Kent. Thanks for responding.

When you say, "...That means logic is prescriptive and therefore must be universal...." I am afraid I don't understand you. Why can the "ought" not be based in some universal objective Truth, but be simply based on interpersonal consensus? That seems to me to be how ethical sysems are worked out in the real world in societies, communities, etc., and is good enough for me. Apparently it isn't good enough for you. Can you explain why?

More generally, you seem to be hung up on the idea that things like morals *must* be based on some putatively objective principle in order to be worthwhile. I simply do not understand this. Can you go through your reasoning on this more time, please?

Similarly, when you say, "...Values must be derived from a personal being...," I am afraid I have no idea what you mean. Can you please expand and/or rephrase?

As to the question of establishing personhood, I am also not sure I understand what you mean. If I understand you correctly, you seem to feel that atheist perspectives offer no rationale for making a distinction between persons and the physical materials which comprise them. If this is the case, I would simply have to answer, speaking for myself only, that it is a case of "looks like a duck, quacks like a duck". That is, person is as person does. I suppose it is possible that some of the entities I assume to be persons are really super-advanced robots, but I have no reason to think that might be the case. I assume them to be persons. And what is a person? It is, to me, an entity that as far as I can tell from its actions is sentient and has self-awareness in the same ways I believe I do. So again you see how empathy plays a part.

As to your statement regarding the foundations of logic, "...One question that jumps out immediately is how one would go about observing the laws of logic without first presupposing them since we must use logic in our observations...." I am afraid I don't quite understand your objection. As far as I can see, we learn logic from our observations in the same way we learn about gravity or wetness or heat. I do not think that humans are born inherently rational--I am the parent of two children, and I assure you my direct observation would be that infants are not born rational, but grow into it. I *do* think our brains are evolved to look for patterns and build conceptual models. The world by and large behaves in a manner which is consistent, in a particular way which we have defined as being essentially logical. Causes, effects. Exclusion. Deduction, induction. They are all learned empirically, I believe. Where they come from? I remain more or less militantly agnostic on that question (that is to say, "I don't know, and neither does anyone else !" ).

Again, you seem driven to drive things to first principles--to some underlying essential Truth. I am by no means implying that you are unique in this apparent need; but I personally neither believe such Truths are necessarily existent, or even assuming they exist, necessary to know or even ultimately knowable or discoverable. I in fact personally feel that all such endeavors are doomed to failure for lack of evidence... <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> but people seem to be driven to it, so...whatever. (This view is, I am sure you will agree, too tangential to this discussion to continue here.)

As for the particularly Christian stuff (that is, the putative sacrifice inherent in the crucifixion of Christ, the Original Sin business, the story of Job), I'd certainly wouldn't mind your interpretation, especially since you feel my understanding of the particular examples cited is lacking. Every explanation of these matters I have heard so far has been deeply flawed in one way or another in my opinion, but I would be the first to admit that am by no means a scholar of matters theological; so perhaps you may be able to give me a new perspective worthy of consideration.

Regards.

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: Marz Blak ]</p>

Jack the Bodiless

Humanity is composed of "personal beings". These personal beings form a consensus on values.
Evolution. Please explain why this is a problem.
Evolution again.

I think you are overstating the importance of logic. There doesn't have to be a direct logical reason why human survival is good: our motive for believing this is emotional, not logical. But evolution provides a logical explanation for why this emotional response exists in us.

Jobar

Kent, I think you are stating my position fairly.

Let me add to some of the excellent comments since my last post. I would say that logic is not so much a collection of laws like, say, Newtonian mechanics, as it is a set of meta-laws- rules on the making of rules. Logic lets us check the internal coherence of the theories we think up. It does not assure us that our theories are correct when matched against the patterns of the physical universe, but it does give us some confidence that our theories aren't subtle gibberish.

Kent, recall that I said you are seeking absolutes. We live in a relative universe, with no preferred frame of reference. Since we are human, we make our moral judgements relative to humans. Even if there were some sort of absolute moral arbiter, we could not derive its morality for ourselves- it could only be handed down from above. (And I know you think that is what the Bible is; remember that I, and the others here, reject that, and view the Bible as a human artifact, and a primitive one at that.)

I'm a relativist. I, being a human, find it quite reasonable to judge and measure all things from the human point of view; I don't see how anything else is possible.

Radcliffe Emerson

That's a good question. I'm not sure it's good, or we should desire it, but I believe our nature is to want to survive, is it not? My definition of humanism is that we are more important and vital to each other as people, regardless of our ethnic background, or beliefs. Religion to me has caused more violent disputes on this planet than any other factor. Maybe my definition of humanism isn't the technical one, or I'm not humanist at all, and don't know it.
Because I also believe the environment needs to be protected and it has to start now.
To be honest, I like at all the crap going on in the world, and I listen to guys like Colin Powell claiming the US does more for the environment, and I sometimes think as a species we should NOT survive.

Kent Symanzik

Hi Thomas,

Sorry, I did not think you post was serious when I got to your Epitemo god.

You may have noticed that not all atheists believe in the necessity of logic. It appears that you do, so my question to you is how do you account for the universal invariant laws of logic in your worldview? If you have an atheistic worldview you live in a world of particulars only. How do universals exist in your worldview. What is their foundation?

I take this to mean that you think the Christian God is fiction. But, that is what we are debating. Can you show why the Christian God must not exist?

I am not familiar with the transcendental moral argument from evil. I am familiar with the Euthyphro dilemma. This is how I answered it in an earlier post.

My answer to the Euthyphro dilemma is that morality is not an entity that is outside of God himself. It is part of his very character. It defines who he is. Therefore, the basis of morality cannot be changed as it is not something that God made up but rather it is who he is. Just as God is holy he is moral.

I think the dilemma made a lot more sense to Socrates because he was talking about the morality of a plurality of gods. Therefore morality was something totally other than the gods themselves. This actually describes the situation we have if the Christian God does not exist. All moral systems would be completely arbitrary and there would be no way to differentiate between good and evil because actual good and evil would not exist.

Can you elaborate on this? How does your worldview provide a foundation for universals?

Kent

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: Kent Symanzik ]</p>

Kent Symanzik

Hi Keith,

I am not saying that a lack of *belief* in God renders ethics meaningless. I am saying if there is no God at all then ethics are meaningless.

It does not surprise me that you have a high regard for morality even though you do not believe in God. God created us as his image. Our conscience tells us what is right and wrong. He made us to know right and wrong.

What tells you what is right and wrong? And how is it not arbitrary? We all recognize that human life has great value. But, why does it have more value than any other bag of chemicals in an athiestic worldview?

Kent

Jack the Bodiless

Yes, we have a conscience. It's due to social conditioning and evolved human empathy, no supernatural explanation required.

I realize that this was addressed to Keith Russell. However, as this has already been answered my others here, including myself: why continue to ask such questions?

You give the impression that you aren't listening to our answers.

Typhon

You can say it all you want, but it doesn't make it so. Ethics existed, likely long before the creation of gods and god-like figures. One need only look at other, non human social species to see plentiful examples of such phenomena, including cooperative and even altruistic behavior.

More patent silliness, not backed by the preponderance of facts found in the real world which speak to the contrary.

Of course it should not surprise you that the poster has a "high regard for morality" even though he or she is an atheist. This is because morality and belief in gods are two different concepts, which are not exclusively linked. Morality is an expression of human behavior, and has in this regard, likely been around long before the formation of belief in supernatural beings.

Our "conscience" tells us very little. Our learned and inherited characteristics as regards to appropriate group behavior among our species, our culture, and our kin groups tell us "what is right and wrong."

See above, and absolutely, this is not "arbitrary." BTW, we do not all recognize that all human life has great value at all times and in all places. The value set, does differ from time to time, culture to culture, among individuals, within a certain range of values. Of course however, on average, we find human life to have more value to us, humans, than "any other bag of chemicals."

Sigh. It would be helpful if you bothered to read the archives which is full of rebuttals to such claims as yours, before you opened your mouth on the topic.

.T.

Jack the Bodiless

The nonexistence of the Biblical God (I assume that's what you mean by the "Christian" God: presuppositionalists tend to be Biblical inerrantists) can be seen from Biblical contradictions, both internal and with external reality (the falsehood of the Genesis creation myth and so forth). The Bible is incoherent, does not provide a consistent basis for morality, and does not comport with reality.

But a full discussion of these issues will take some time!