Jack the Bodiless

And I addressed it there, but I will reiterate it here. Blaming all members of a group for the actions of individuals within the group is a sign of incompetence, of non-omniscience, of inability to determine who ACTUALLY is guilty.

As there were supposedly only two humans on Earth at the time, and everyone else was born later, it doesn't actually take a deductive genius to figure it out in this case. God has an IQ of... what? 60, 50, 40?
No, THE UNIVERSE has no ethics. I do. Why are you being so obtuse?
My argument is that what you call the "Christian" conception of God is not the BIBLICAL conception of God. It does not correspond to the God that the Hebrews wrote about in the Bible. Your interpretation of Scripture is in error.
What part of the phrase "significant to human beings" do you not understand? It's only four words, I honestly can't see how I can simplify it much more.
You said that "they are reducible to meaninglessness because of self-refutation, arbitrariness, and inconsistency". This is a false statement. Saying it dosen't make it so.
Your premise is that God exists. Your "argument" is that you can simply make that premise without supporting it: it "must" be true. So far, there hasn't been anything to "interact" with, except your ongoing assertions that there is some sort of defect in all alternative worldviews: in the case of my own, it is apparently your failure to comprehend (deliberate, I suspect).
Prove that God's basic nature does not change. This is a baseless assertion.
What part of "do no harm" do you not understand? Now we're down to THREE words. Do I really have to explain why harm contradicts do no harm?
Which I have done. As have others. Repeatedly.
Define "should" in this context. I have given you a comprehensive list of applications of "should" to this issue. I will not repeat it.
When will you do the same? We're still waiting.

Philosoft

<strong> And I utterly fail to see what Christian motivations have to do with objective morals.

This: "the reason why Believers avoid eternal punishment is not simply because we believe in Christ, but because of the fact that Christ has bore the just punishment that was due us" means you feel you owe it to God to follow his rules. This simply has nothing to do with objectivity.

<strong> No, you know what a human-penned book says are the alleged contents of the alleged God's will. Unless you're prepared to defend a different standard of knowledge in this instance as well?

<strong> It appears you have already defined "ethical should" as "something that cannot be explained by evolution." How about this: We SHOULD not kill each other because it is an empirical fact that naturally selected social cooperation increases our survival rate.

<strong> Again, you are defining terms to exclude my conclusions a priori.

<strong> That's what observation is for.

<strong> Sorry bub, try again. This isn't going to get you out of answering my objection.

<strong> Perhaps I was too simplistic. We still have to make many conscious decisions that entail various cooperative behaviors. Our observations that those behaviors in fact do increase our ability to survive will influence our decisions. Suggest what we SHOULD do, in other words.

[ May 16, 2002: Message edited by: Philosoft ]</p>

Jack the Bodiless

Dave: I think we need to sort out some terminology before continuing.

You have stated that God is good, just, moral, and so forth. Furthermore, you have stated that God has these qualities by definition: that these qualtities stem from God's nature.

Unfortunately, this means that you are not speaking English. There is no dictionary definition of these terms which invokes the J/C God, or any other God. These terms DO NOT mean what you claim them to mean.

As I have already pointed out, the punishment of innocents for the crimes of others is unjust. You cannot wriggle out of this, because the very concept of "justice" involves people suffering the consequences of their own actions. Similarly, if morality and ethical behaviour are defined in purely human terms (as they are, in every standard dictionary), you cannot claim that God is "moral" where his actions violate morality and cause harm.

Therefore I propose that we use prefixes to describe your terms. When discussing the Biblical versions of these concepts, I will refer to them as Bgood, Bjustice, Bmorality etc. When discussing the versions used by modern Christian theologians (the "omnimax" God), I will use Tgood, Tjustice, Tmorality and so forth. I will continue to use the normal English words when referring to the non-God-dependent English meanings used by atheists and most Christians alike.

And I'll post this to both threads (with a reminder that a thread specifically dedicated to presuppositionalism is still running <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=56&t=000169" target="_blank">here</a>).


...Now, where do we stand?

You have no basis for good, justice or morality: the concepts are apparently incomprehensible to you. But you have bigger problems:

1. The contradictions between Bgood, Bjustice and Bmorality and Tgood, Tjustice and Tmorality.

2. The inconsistency of Bgood, Bjustice and Bmorality between different parts of the Bible.

3. The inability to make a consistent definition of Tgood, Tjustice and Tmorality which do not contradict the claimed properties of the omnimax God.

Given these problems, your attempt to attack the worldviews of atheists is futile. Even if our worldviews are false, yours is ALSO false. It fails the standards set by yourself: it is inconsistent, unjustified, self-refuting.

Pomp

DaveJes1979,

I'm going to jump in here and try to clear up an apparent misunderstanding. Forgive me if this has already been covered and I've missed it. You said, in response to Philosoft:

Secondly, I would note that your appeal to evolution STILL has not provided us with an ethical "should." Evolution, if it indeed exists, is merely a historical process.

The appeal to evolution is not supposed to provide an ethical "should." What it is supposed to do is explain, historically, why we humans have the sorts of values that we have. I hold that evolutionary psychology and social contract theory, when taken together, provide a comprehensive and plausible explanation of why human societies have adopted the sorts of ethical norms that they have adopted.

To step beyond that and ask if those norms are true in some ultimate sense is, in my opinion, not a meaningful question to ask. We can account for human ethical judgements using only human values as our standard. You've arbitrarily decided that some "foundation" for those values is required in order to argue that your presuppositionalism provides just such a foundation. In order for your argument to make any impact, you first have to show that human ethical judgements must rely on some nonhuman foundation.

geoff

geoff

Jlowder,

Good question. I'll take a stab at it. First, some preliminary remarks. I don't know many theists who believe that the "moral argument" is a "proof" in the sense that it is logically coercive (i.e., that the premises entail the conclusion). They typically argue for something more modest, e.g., that objective morality is not possible without a source that is immutable. A non-technical argument might look something like this:

1. The notions "right" and "wrong" can refer to actual states of affairs.
2. Such notions, if they are to be objectively true, must be grounded in a source that is immutable else they would not entail objectivity.
3. That source cannot be located within the material world because all things that are material undergo change.
-----
4. Therefore, that source of objective notions of "right" and "wrong" is an immutable entity.

As you can see, this argument doesn't prove the classical theistic "package" (that God is personal, omnipotent, omniscient, etc.). Many other arguments would be need to prove that an entity could possess these attributes. It only attempts to prove that in order for morality to be objective (properly construed), then such a notion must be grounded in an immutable entity.

(Worth noting: most atheists would argue that they can be moral without believing in God. No clear-thinking theist would argue with that. Theists, rather, contend that if morality is to be "objective" it must be grounded in an immutable source. The moral argument really is pretty modest in what it sets out to accomplish.)

Thanks,
Geoff

Jack the Bodiless

Premise 3 is not sound. In fact, it shows a common theistic misinterpretation of what the phrase "material world" actually means. Nobody is actually suggesting that everything in the naturalistic Universe is made of matter: this is evidently not true (light and gravitation are not made of matter, nor are natural laws). An axiom of metaphysical naturalism is that the rules governing the interactions of energy and matter ARE pretty much immutable: they do NOT change.

If we define "objective" as "true regardless of personal opinion", then evolution provides an objective grounding for morality in the immutable rules of the Universe. Certain types of behavior are destructive to society, leading to the extinction of cultures which do not curb them, and this is true regardless of the personal opinion of the people in those cultures: it is a universal principle.

Ironically, according to this definition of "objective", there can be no objective, absolute morality under Christian theism, as all moral issues are "right" or "wrong" according to the personal opinion of God: hence the Euthyphro Dilemma.

Vorkosigan

[B]
(Worth noting: most atheists would argue that they can be moral without believing in God. No clear-thinking theist would argue with that. Theists, rather, contend that if morality is to be "objective" it must be grounded in an immutable source. The moral argument really is pretty modest in what it sets out to accomplish.)

Thanks,
Geoff[/QB][/QUOTE]

Hi geoff?

Why must morality be "grounded?" What does that mean, to be "grounded?" One of my fundamental objections to this type of thinking is that morality is not "grounded" in anything. It rests on nothing. Values exist only in networks of other facts and values.

Vorkosigan

Bill Snedden

And exactly how is the situation any different than with your god? Why "should" we accept his mandate as to morality? What makes his "values" (as if such a creature could actually have any values at all) better than our own?

I find it both troubling and amusing that presuppositionalists are in exactly the same boat, up the same river, and without the same paddle as the rest of us, yet they stubbornly maintain that they're actually traveling in a luxury yacht* simply because they insist it is one.

Wishing doesn't make it so.

Regards,

Bill Snedden

*That's pronounced "Throat-Warbler Mangrove"

[ May 20, 2002: Message edited by: Bill Snedden ]</p>

jlowder

Like others on this board, I am not sure what you mean by "grounded." But putting that worry aside, the conclusion of your argument is consistent with metaphysical naturalism. Metaphysical naturalism is the view that the physical universe is a closed system in the sense that nothing that is neither a part nor product of it can affect it. Thus, metaphysical naturalism denies the existence of all supernatural beings, including God. So defined, metaphysical naturalism is compatible with the existence of abstract objects. So metaphysical naturalists could consistently agree with your conclusion, but regard moral truths as timeless, logically necessary truths.

jlowder