EvilTeuf

Kent, you've been fairly transparent throughout this thread. You're attempting to pigeonhole Atheists into a particular type or variety of morality because they are Atheists. Sorry, no dice. You cannot infer any other kind of beliefs, positive or not, from someone's Atheism. I know Atheists who are proponents of objective morality. I know Atheists who are Libertarians, Democrats, Republicans, Socialists, Fascists and all the rest. I know Atheists who are empiricists, rationalists and conventionalists.

In short, you're boxing shadows. You're fighting strawmen. Give it up already. Your arguments (if I may dignify them with the term) are inconsequential, fallacious and misleading, based on strawmen and misunderstandings, and frankly, they reek worse than a week old corpse. You're beaten. Acknowledge it and slink off with your tail between your legs until the next time you can find a big old strawman to play with.

Yeesh.

Synaesthesia

Kent,
No offense taken, but you have yet to support this with argument. Ethics is a very large field very LITTLE of which is concerned at all with God. Moreover, you have given no indication that God serves any explanatory value (being inherently ad hoc and unparsimonious) or that rationality presupposes him.

Especially considering that your whole worldview is based upon it, I suggest you try to defend this contention.

I don’t presuppose this because there are many forms of (often mututally inconsistent logic). There is no one set of laws of logic. Logic is a tool of thought and very often certain logical systems are not useful for our purposes.

Ironically, one of the ‘foundations’ of naturalism is the rejection of first philosophy. There is no one starting place. Inevitably we must construct whole webs of mutually supporting ideas and try to develop it. Presupposing certain aspects of it is a recipie for stagnation.

I agree that human value is not intrinic, it is relational. That does not mean I cannot and do not have a good moral system; I do. I primarily value human life and happiness and the success of positive social processes and ideas. Bags of chemicals we may be, but there is nothing mere about it. Each human is irreplaceable, unique and endlessly interesting.

As a humanist, I do what is right and avoid what is wrong because I care about people, not because some big man in the sky will kick my ass if I don’t.

Kent Symanzik

Hi EvilTeuf,

I really do not want to make fallacious arguments. Can you point where my arguments are fallacious so I can be corrected. Please help me see where I am using strawmen.

Thanks

Kent

Kent Symanzik

Hi Synaesthesia,

You mentioned that God serves no explanatory value (being inherently ad hoc and unparsimonious) before, can you explain what you mean?

Are you saying that logic is conventional? Can you explain how we can use logic that is not universal and invariant? If there is more than one set of logic why can't I just make up one that proves my position by definition?

Also, can you refer to various sets of laws of logic so I can see how they work?

I don't really understand this. You seem to be saying that there is no foundation at all. But, ironically, isn't that itself a presupposition?

I'm not sure I know what you mean by relational. Maybe you can explain that.

I do believe you when you say that you have good moral values. I just do not believe you can rationally justify them.

Except for your statement "Each human is irreplaceable, unique and endlessly interesting." everything you have said is only that you do in fact have morals. I know that. I am looking for the justification for you morality.

Let's look at your statement that each human is irreplacable, unique, and interesting. Here I think you are trying to justify why you value human life.

One thing that I have noticed in discussing notions of values with atheists is that the terms that atheists use do not even comport with atheistic worldviews. Terms like human, life, person, are taken for granted to have meaning. But what actual meaning can they have. If we are just bags of chemicals then what is the value difference between a bag we call human and a can of soda pop? Same with the term life. The can of pop does not have life while the bag called human has life. So what is life? It is simply a different state. What change of value is there when a bag of chemicals changes from the state of life to the state of dead?

My point simply being that these terms have no foundation in an atheistic world. These terms are dependent on a personal world so they cannot be used to defend an atheistic worldview.

Kent

DRFseven

You think you can just state that atheists don't find meaning in terms such as "human," "life," and "person", and that your saying so makes it true? Of course those terms have just as much meaning for us as they do for theists. It is you, for whom terms such as "bags of chemicals" seem to have no meaning, or, more properly, have a negative connotation.

Synaesthesia

Hey Kent,
Not in the sense that I don’t have a reason for thinking that way - I certainly do. While, I don’t have a strictly hierarchial organization of epistemic priority, some of my beliefs are more foundational in the sense that more depends upon them and they are less likely to be modified.

For example, I am more likely to conclude that my measurements are incorrect than I am to conclude that the laws of physics are wrong. However, if over time it becomes quite clear that the laws of physics cannot account for a whole bunch of measurements and other phenomenon, I will be forced to modify my theories.

Another salient example is my belief in God. I once based my conception of morality, of existential causation and explanation upon the notion that the christian God existed. I observed evil, but that was not sufficient to change my mind because God was such an important theory. It was only when I saw a combination of a great many factors (and alternate explanations) that I took seriously the possibility of discarding God.

Certainly. If I observe a planet moving in a manner inconsistent with my physical theory, I can do things like modify the constants, or posit unobserved planets. There are clear consequences to such modifications, and they can in turn throw off other elements.

With God no such modifications are required. We can simply say that God, being omnipotent and inscrutable, somehow deals with the problem. This is what I mean by ad hoc, we don’t even need to modify the theory to account for things because nothing can possibly contradict it.

Parsimony is a very deep concept. The essential idea is, as Einstein put it, “Explanations should be as simple as possible; but not simpler.”

In my conception, ontology is inextractably tied up with simplicity. That’s why I think there is no such thing as a dog independent of it’s interacting parts or computation independent of it’s relational properties. Unless there is very good reason to think that there is an additional particle or essence to the universe, we should not assume that there is.

Hmm, people mean different things by saying that logic is conventional. However, I’ll give an example of what I mean. In Aristotelian logic, there is an imaginary square. The four corners of which (going clockwise from top left) are
A:All X are Y
E:No X are Y,
O:Some X are not Y and
I: Some X are Y.

By this classical system, A implies I and E implies O. In other words, to say that “All unicorns have horns” implies that “Some unicorns have horns”.

O and I have existential import, ie. to assert that some unicorns have horns is to assert that there is at least one unicorn with a horn.

But unicorns don’t exist. So according to a more modern system of logic, simply because All unicorns have horns, does not mean that there is any unicorn with a horn. In other words, A does NOT, by those systems, imply I.

Now this is just one example off the top of my head. There are logical systems with more than two truth-values, (ie. not just true and false), with novel logical connectives and so on. The properties of the logical system are defined by their rigid axioms. The properties are objective, the usefulness of the systems depends upon what we are doing


How does logic apply to the actual universe? I think that’s a very deep question. I think it has a lot to do with how patterns interrelate, but I can’t be more specific than that. It’s a topic that I suspect will entice me for years to come.

It looks to me that there are people about. I see meaning in what I do, I feel love for people.

Very obviously because atheist don’t apply sweeping anthropomorphism to the universe does not imply that we can apply NO meaningful, humanistic conceptions to the world!

Of course, it does suggest that human meaning is a very small and insignificant part of the grand scheme of things. Somehow, that doesn’t strike me as... demeaning.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

Vorkosigan

Except for your statement "Each human is irreplaceable, unique and endlessly interesting." everything you have said is only that you do in fact have morals. I know that. I am looking for the justification for you morality.

Since morals are justified by other values, Kent, this should not be difficult to find. For example, your presupposition of the Bible and its god is a value that justifies other values you hold.

You face this problem yourself. There are many values never covered in the Bible. For example, a huge class of social ethics. How do you find answers for whether/how:

• infant industries should be subsidized
• Airlines should receive Jones Act subsidies
• incinerators should be sited
• nuclear power plants should be sited
• forests and river basins should be managed
• find the proper level of risk for society as a whole
• find the proper level of risk for the individual
• the proper level of defense spending relative to GDP
• the proper definition of terms like GDP, unemployment, inflation and so on
• government should own industries

I could go on, but you get the idea. These are all moral questions, but they are not covered in the Bible. So how do you find your own values for them? Same as we atheists do -- by an ad hoc process of being taught by your parents and society, by studying the issues, by observing other cultures and societies, by developing ideas on your own, and so on. When you understand how you deevlop values for ethical questions not discussed in the Bible -- and there are millions -- you will understand how subjectivists (many of whom are Christians) function.

Vorkosigan

Kent Symanzik

Hi Synaesthesia,

If I understand you correctly your reasoning here is that since God is perfect (needing no modifications) he cannot exist. I do not see how your reasoning holds. Doesn't it make sense that if God exists and is the creator of all things that we would find all answers in him?

You are simply stating your presupposition here, which is fine. But, it is not in itself a proof against the existence of God.

Correct me if you disagree but didn't Aristotle just formalize a system for expressing logical truths? He didn't invent logic. The law of non-contradiction was in force before Aristotle was born.

You seem to be confusing different systems of expressing logic with logic itself. Or are you really saying that Aristotle invented the first logic system and others have invented more logic systems since?

I think here you have just told me again that you find meaning in the universe. I don't doubt that one bit. But my point is that your worldview does not support meaning. And I have been trying to show how the terms that atheists use do not comport with atheistic worldviews. What is the grand scheme of things? There is no grand scheme.

I would really be interested in you justifying your use of life, death, person, and value in an atheistic worldview. For instance, how does "life" mean more than simply a change in state?

Your discussion is excellent and a joy.

Kent

Kent Symanzik

Christians do not claim that the bible explicitly handles all current moral issues. What the bible does do is reveal to us the moral character of God. God's moral character is not dependent on our understanding of it.

So, yes we struggle with issues and disagree amongst each other how we should handle some issues but this has no bearing on whether there is a standard at all. The variable here is human understanding, not God's moral law.

Kent

Kent Symanzik

I do not doubt that you find meaning in those terms. My point is that in so doing you are stepping outside of what an atheistic worldview will support. My question has been, can the use of these terms be justified in an atheistic worldview?

In the Christian worldview we are not just bags of chemicals. We are human beings that are made in the image of God. God has given us value. God defines what is valuable. Our value is ultimately measured in God's purpose for us and our purpose never ends. We are useful to God whether we glorify him by revealing his mercy or glorify him by revealing his justice.

Please ask questions if you like. I am never as clear as I want to be.

Kent