One of the last sane

Tercel, why haven't you answered this excellent question of Vorkosigan's? I too would like to read your answer to that one.

RogerLeeCooke

There are a number of points to be made here. First, are you so SURE that absolute morals are a good thing? The difficulty is KNOWING what is absolutely right. Let me give you an example.

Why are there "Southern" Baptist and "Southern" Methodist churches nowadays? You probably know the answer: Because the clergy and people in those denominations *defended slavery* on Biblical grounds. If there is anything even close to being absolutely *wrong* it is slavery. (I can discuss what I personally mean by right and wrong in another post if you wish.) Yet the oracle these people chose to guide their choice of right and wrong (the Bible) led them to believe it was right. And the belief that right is absolute only made them more obstinate in defending it. The belief that morals are absolute may be true; but, absent some sure way of *absolutely knowing* what the absolute morality is, in practical terms, they might as well be relative.

It is precisely people who are 100% sure they are right who do the worst things: The Inquisition, the Puritans who hanged Quakers on Boston Common, the Communists, the Nazis. The oracle they follow is irrelevant. The important fact is that they are following an oracle.

And, everybody's morals develop over time. Even the strictest modern fundamentalists allow entertainments on Sunday that their forefathers would have condemned as grossly impious.

As for your question about abortion, "who cares"? I care. Why do you think I can't care about that, just because I don't believe in God? Because no oracle tells me to care? Do you believe I must approve of robbery on the same grounds?

RogerLeeCooke

Very well said, Vorkosigan! May I add that, when working out personal ethics, only an idiot (in the original Greek sense of a person who lives privately, apart from the community) would choose egotism as the basis. Even a glimmer of rationality would tell him that a society where others respect property and he is allowed to steal, for example, is not one of the options open to him. If I want to live in a society where promises are kept (and I do), then I must keep promises. Christians always assume that cooperation and compassion are impossible without the threat of eternal damnation. C'est curieux.

RogerLeeCooke

When you say "why", do you mean "on what grounds" or "from what cause"? If you mean the latter, the answer is obvious. Human beings are social animals. We all get socialized by our parents, friends, and teachers to care about the people around us; we learn to "feel their pain" (to quote a recent President). That is, in fact, the *cause* of everyone's acting moral.

As for "grounds," there aren't any. (In other words, I subscribe to what you refer to as nihilism.) NONE ARE NEEDED. Are you afraid people will STOP socializing their children and one another through mutual interaction if they don't have some belief that the universe endorses their morality? Don't worry, they won't. We internalize the morality, and doing right becomes a basic desire, reinforced by the genuine fear of all kinds of social sanctions---loss of friendship, ostracism, prison sentences---if we depart from it. We don't NEED any oracle to tell us to do right. It's what we WANT to do.

A better question is: Why do you assume that morality has to be logically deduced from facts? It's a very weird assumption to make. It's like believing that milk isn't a food unless it can be carried in a potato-chip bag.

I have argued in other posts that in fact oracles such as sacred texts and authority figures can be as destructive of this socialization as you seem to believe atheism can be---witness the case of the young man who murdered a doctor working at Planned Parenthood: he sincerely believed he was pleasing God by doing so. Likewise, Hitler's youth were told to believe absolutely in the wisdom of their leaders and to ignore scenes that appeared to them to be wrong, such as the rounding up of people on the streets who had not done anything obviously wrong. Those scenes cause the hair on the back of my neck to stand up when I read of people like Pat Robertson discussing how wonderful it would be to have a set of Biblically sound judges to hear pleas that a crime was committed in the name of God, or (even worse) to have spirit-inspired policemen authorized to arrest people whose crimes they can foresee. (Robertson really did say that, even though he now denies having done so.)

[ July 07, 2002: Message edited by: RogerLeeCooke ]

[ July 07, 2002: Message edited by: RogerLeeCooke ]</p>

Theli

Theli...

No, last time I asked this question you answered the question from god's perspecive, not the individuals.
Anyway... on to your response.

So, the reason to act benevolent is out of guilt to your creator?
How is this reason even relavent when god's existence is in question?
Your initial claim on this thread (I persume) was that the existence of god provides a necessary moral standard and therefore godbelief is necessary. But if god's existence is in question then the reason for following his supposed moralcode is in question aswell.
If god's moralcode doesn't make an individual more benevolent than any other moralcode + god's existence is in question, then why should we follow his decree? Why should it even matter?

Qeh?

What kind of right and wrong are you talking about? Remember that "right" and "wrong" are not objective terms as they exist only in the mind of people/beings.
In what sense do you mean "right"?

Yes, thanks.

Yes, ideas incorporated by humans. Humans that actually feels compassion for eachother. Humans that believes in equality.
Is there a problem here?

Yes.

Ok... If you get the idea to run around with a gun in the middle of the city shooting people, you say that is to your advantage?
You don't think people will try to stop you?
If you dump your garbage on your neighbours lawn, do you think the that will in the long run be beneficial for you?
I would like to see you inforce these ideas.

Now who's the nihilist?
So, you feel disgusted by helping people? Unless you get candy afterwards, that is.

Let me state this little scenario for you. You are walking down the road a sunny morning holding a rock in your hand (this script sucks) when you suddenly spot your neighbour. He says "Hello, how are you?"

Now, in this scenario, you have 2 options.
A. You throw the rock in his face.
B. You say "I'm fine, how are you?".

Now, according to your objective nihilism, the only thing that stands in the way of you choosing A is that a god you read about in a book is watching you, and you will get spanked by that god if you're not nice.

RogerLeeCooke

Hey, great idea! Tercel is not internally inconsistent, he just has no way of proving his morality is the true one, as opposed to others, like the Animal Rights people, who are equally convinced that they are proclaiming a natural law in lobbying for votes for oysters. Some people, like Thomas Aquinas, have combined the two approaches, supplementing scriptural morality with their own version of a morality derived from nature. The two things, however, are very unequally yoked. When appealing to nature for morality, you come up against the fact that nature really is "red in tooth and claw."

As for me (and I presume you), when someone preaches a morality that I disagree with, I recognize the quarrel as just that: a quarrel, a disagreement over whose vision of society is to be implemented. I wish the moral absolutists would recognize the situation the same way. There might then be some possibility of peaceful compromise between us. But their position is that of CS Lewis who thought it very important to show that the Allies were right and the Nazis wrong, not merely that they disagreed. Probably he thought there was some danger that the Allies would adopt the Nazi morality if they didn't do that. Simply silly, as Lewis so often was.

As for a reason to live, you are right. We don't need one. I'm still enjoying life, even though I've been polluting this planet since the reign of Roosevelt II. I no longer have any moments when I fear death. If it comes this year, then I'm quit for the next, as one of Henry VI's soldiers said. If it doesn't, I'll continue my happy Hobbit existence, barring major catastrophes, in which case I can always remove myself.

HRG

The same way that Euclidean and Non-Euclidean geometry can be equally right without being both wrong.

None of the above is a logical reason why we should love other people; you would have to add an axiom like "If God commands X, X is good".

They are as valid as the reasons a non-theist might give why loving others is good (and those by themselves are not logical either):

Because I feel empathy with them
Because the Golden Rule commands it
Because cooperation benefits both of us, and by caring for A, I increase my chance of cooperating with A (see Robert Axelrod's work)
etc.

Morality is like mathematics: you have to base it on axioms. I've never understood why theist axioms (e.g. "Obey God X") should be privileged over non-theist axioms (e.g. "Obey the Golden Rule"). IOW, the development of a moral system does not require the existence of any god; and the existence of a god does not make a moral system binding.

Regards,
HRG.

Autonemesis

That sounds like a Microsoft End User License Agreement. You don't know what you've agreed to until you open the box. But when you open the box, you find that one of the things you've agreed to is that you cannot return an open box, nor can you do with the product some of the things you normally expect to be able to do with your property, and on and on... The analogies are pretty richly amusing, not the least of which is the question of enforceability.

Metacrock

That's presumptive?

Metacrock

ahahahahahahahahahahah, this is so funny considering the post that came before it about not making these kinds of statements!!!!


Dr. Retard just got through saying:

[ July 08, 2002: Message edited by: Metacrock ]</p>