Jagged

luvluv, is what you're really saying here is that only a theist can hope to claim INFALLIBLE and UNIVERSAL moral belief while an atheist cannot? Because it seems like your definition of morality rests on the very fact that it is divinely decreed. This is a circular argument.

I personally say that I have moral beliefs but I am a relativist. I do not claim to know the universal, eternal morality which should be upheld throughout the universe and throughout all time. Maybe some of the other atheists here hold different views.

But why would you claim that my sort of moral belief is any less RATIONAL? That does not make any sense. If the only variable between my morality and yours is belief in god, then I really don't see the point of your argument. Atheists by definition do not accept divine moral directives.

Jagged

excerpt from the Official Dictionary of Luvluv:

morality(n.): what god says is right or wrong.
immorality(n.): what anyone else says is right or wrong.

rationality(n.): believing what god says
irrationality(n.): believing what anyone else says.

Yawn. Wake me up when you have anything else to say.

Primal

Well that is begging the question isn't it? Why then can't one say "God only tells us what is...not what ough to be?"

Seems you are invoking an arbitrary divide.


The Luvluv dictionary seems to have this pretty figured out. But the question is why does God get special privelege, luvluv says "cause he's omniscient" i.e. the smartest.

Most likely I think for most Xians its because God is omnipotent i.e. the toughest. In any case botha re very dubious foundations for morality.

luvluv

Dr. Retard:

Well, I hate to be unfair, but as a theist I, of course, get to assume there is an omniscient God for the purpose of our argument, because theism entails the belief in an omniscient God. However, atheism does not entail the belief in moral realism. Atheism, as Golliath tells me at least once a week, is simply the lack of belief in Gods. So, if you are entering a claim of moral realism into your worldview you, if you are an empricist, rationalist, or combination of the two, must prove/justify this claim. So, in my opinion, in a conversation of the theist versus the rationalist/empricist atheist, you do not get to assume the existence of objective moral reality. Again, as an empiricist/rationalist, you do not get to assume the existence of ANYTHING, you have to prove it. That's what it means to be an empiricist or a rationalist.

I think here is where you fall off the reason boat. By this criteria, you would have to be prepared to jettison every bit of second hand material you have ever received ever. You could not believe in any newspaper, you could not believe that e=mc^2, you could not believe in anything you have not personally verified.

The fact is, as an authority, a word spoken by God should not be held up to any more strict proofs of veracity than any claim by any other authority. It would take no more proof for God's words to be believable than for the words of any other person to be believable. If one can rationally accept something like quantum indeterminancy, even though most of us have never performed the two slit experiment, on the basis of authority, then one can rationally accept the veracity of God's words should God speak to him.

The question is, at what point are you rationally justified in believing the testimony of a witness? If your sister called and said that your mother was sick, would you be rationally justified in believing it? Or would you need to take a blood sample from your mother and send it to the lab before you could decide whether or not she was really sick? No, you are rationally justified in believing the testimony of generally honest witnesses. Roughly 90% of all our knowledge is dependent on this being true. If we could not trust that anything anyone said to us was true without personal verification, most of us would know very little. Similarly, one could be rationally justified in believing the words of God. If He had proven Himself to be generally honest, one could be rationally justified in taking Him at his word.

I disagree. It follows, if God is omniscient, that He knows the "real" moral truth. God could simply tell us what that truth is.

Perhaps it could be worded "p" from "God told me he holds the belief p". If I have no reason to believe that God is lying, then I can be rationally justified at accepting him at his word.

I thought it was your position that if rational argument and emprical data cannot support a claim, that it must be false? That is what I believe I said. Not that emprical data can't prove it one way or the other, but that it cannot be proven PERIOD. The bottom line is, if you are an empiricist or a rationalist then to be consistent you must provide yourself with proof that your moral positions are true, or else you should abandon them. K has done it, it's not that hard.

Again, if this is true than you don't know much of anything, because most of what you know is a result of something you have been told by a reliable witness or authority. If you were to really hold to such a stringent standard, you could not believe anything anyone ever said to you that you did not personally verify. One is rationally justified in accepting the claims of a generally trustworthy authority or witness, or else most of our individual knowledge is not justified.

Jagged Little Pill:

No, the decreed part has nothing to do with it. That's just how we find out about it. By definition, it is impossible for an Omniscient Person to hold a false belief. Therefore if God, as an Omniscient Person, held the belief that "x was wrong for all possible agents", x would really be wrong for all possible agents. Therefore, the truth of a moral statement within atheism could be justified through the rules of logic.

I hold that the atheist's beliefs cannot be justified AT ALL. I think, for your own honesty, you should stop seeing this as a contest and look at the consistency of your own beliefs.

You cannot prove your morality is true, and yet you believe it to be true. You cannot prove God's existence to be true, and yet you do not believe it to be true.

If you hold that one can only believe something because it is proven or is rationally justified, you should not believe in the truth of any moral statement. Period. No need in even worrying your head about the comparative advantages of theism, because this problem is sitting in your lap whether theism exists in the world or not. After all your crying about theism not being any better, it doesn't matter in the end. Again, theists could believe in it EVEN IF IT WASN'T RATIONALLY JUSTIFIED.

But that does not change the central problem that you have to deal with as a rationalist/empiricist... you believe in something which cannot be proven to exist. That is YOUR problem, not theism's. It has absolutely nothing to do with theism. My notion of theistic morality could turn out to be totally unjustified and I can still consistently hold to it. But even if that were the case, your moral beliefs would not be rationally justified so you would either have to stop claiming to base your beliefs on proof or you would have to drop your beliefs in morals to be consistent. Or you could be stubbornly inconsistent, which is certainly your right as a human being.

[ November 20, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

K

luvluv:

The trouble with this is that we don't have any words being spoken by God. All we have is a 2000 year old text about people claiming to have heard the word of God and present day people claiming to have heard His word. These same people would be considered completely unreliable witnesses if they professed to have heard the word of any other god.

So, to borrow your analogy, it would be like a self-procaimed medium informing you that your deceased sister wanted to tell you that your mother was sick. I think most rational people would want to confirm that by checking to see if their mother was actually sick.

Also, we have no idea whether God would be an authority on anything - unless we take the word, not of God Himself, but of an ancient superstitious group of people. With that as a foundation, we could just as easily declare Zeus the ultimate authority on morality. And by your arguments so far, that would be a perfectly rational thing for us to do.

Jagged

this is what is known to the rest of the world as a DIRECT CONTRADICTION, luvluv. Pot, this is kettle, nice to meet you... Translation: luvluv does not have to give any logical or rational justification for any statement he makes. Yet he may tell the rest of us that our beliefs are not logical or rational. This is fair because he is a Theist and therefore beyond reproach by reason of insanity.

luvluv

K:

I have been saying for a good three pages now that this is about the internal consistency of the two positions. This thread was about the foundations of morality in atheism and theism, and the notion that theistic morality is as unable to ground it's truth claims as is atheism. This is simply not the case.

This is about the third time I have told you that this is not about the ability of a particular theist to know at a particular time what a particular moral truth is. It is about the ability to to what atheism cannot... to provide some sort of logical means by which our value statements could be justified. K, I don't know how I can make this any clearer to you. jlowder opened by claiming that theistic morality does not solve any problems that atheistic morality suffers from, and I argued the opposite point. This is about the internal ability of each respective position to justfiy their statements of value. My contention is that theists have a very logically easy THEORETICAL means of knowing their value statements are true. Atheists have NO means. Please, please understand... I am not using this as a practical application (although one could probably be justified in doing so).

Jagged Little Pill:

This is what is known in my world as a typo, Jagged. I meant to say that within THEISM, morality could be justified through the rules of logic.

No my friend this is fair because your claims do not become rationally justified simply because mine (supposedly) aren't. I'm imploring you to see that the two are simply unrelated. Whether theistic morality can be justified rationally or not, ATHEISTIC MORALITY CANNOT, and in the interests of consistency this should have your attention far more than my theism or my personality (sparkling though it may be). You've got a problem in YOUR HOUSE, and pointing out all the problems in my house might be fun, but it ain't gonna make your problem go away.

Jagged

I never claimed they were. Your claims are not justified because there is no logic in them-- completely unrelated to any discussion of atheistic morality.
I understand you don't like YOUR assumptions being questioned. You tell me what SHOULD have my attention. Obviously you are frustrated that the rest of us will not go along with your outrageous assumptions. Unfortunately for you I will continue to call your spades spades, and refuse to accept your version of "reason," even if it means pissing you off. If you call that personal criticism, so be it.

I find no logic in your claims and therefore could never argue from your perspective.
So says you. I do not recognize a problem in "my house"--in fact a truly helpful discussion of atheistic morality has never taken place here-- you have declared it to be impossible for such a morality to be rational. Frankly as long as you tell me that my beliefs must be totally unreasonable before I even begin, I'm not inclined to open up to you about them.

luvluv, your argument has always included the proposition "theistic morality can be justified" IN ADDITION TO your "major" argument "atheistic morality cannot." You keep trying to draw attention away from the former in favor of the latter, but noone here is buying your reasons why we should do so.

You're saying "no fair questioning MY side, or MY assumptions. I only want to question what YOU believe, within the context of MY argument and MY assumptions."

If I'm going to have a discussion with you, I'm going to address ALL your assumptions, again, even if it pisses you off.
It's extremely hard to see how the two are unrelated when you keep reiterating them both at the same time, often IN THE SAME SENTENCE. I understand that YOU want to believe they are unrelated. But I am not going to "see it your way" just because you keep asserting it to be true. This may be a change from the sort of people you're usually around. When I was a Christian I swallowed a whole lot of bullshit just because it was given to me by church leaders and people who claimed to know what they were talking about. I am done with that scene, and am sure as hell not intimidated enough by you to give in.

You're going to have to do a lot better than this, at least.

K

luvluv:

Then it sounds like your argument reduces to shmething along the lines of:

"If there were theoretically some way to know the true morality of God, even though there is no evidence to suggest that it would be possible or that God even exists, then it would be rational for an individual to base his or her morality on that. At the same time, it would be irrational for an atheist to base morality on the foundations of the world we observe around us."

I know this reeks of a straw man, but I really do not see the difference. Are you treating the existence of God as a given? How do you deal with the fact that you are calling an absolute moral foundation rational when no two people who use the same justification have the exact same morality?

luvluv

Jagged Little Pill:

First off, you aren't bothering me. I posted what I did because you are personalizing the issue instead of dealing with the arguments. Your last post just augmented that. Let's just deal with the issue at hand, okay?

No Jagged, you are welcome to question my assumptions all day. But the best you can come up with is my conclusions are not rationally justified. Well, whoopty-doo. I don't claim to limit my beliefs only to what I can rationally justify. So the best you can do to my position is, basically, nothing.

I'm just presenting my perspective for the purpose of discussion. I whole-heartedly welcome disagreement. Disagree away.

Who in the world wants you to be intimidated??? By me least of all! I am a far cry from being the braintrust around here my friend!

In all honest, I wish you would present counter-claims or arguments for your position instead of simply repeatedly saying "you don't believe them". Well, for goodness sakes, I didn't PRESENT them for them to be agreed with! I'm presenting them on a board full of atheists from whom I was expecting a hostile and thorough counter-argument! I expect a dogfight everytime I post on this board... what reasonable theist wouldn't?

My only beef with you is that you basically aren't debating, you are simply saying "I won't believe it". Well, fine, if that's all you have to say. But since you haven't really presnted a counter-argument I'm obviously going to hold to my opinion. And if you don't think it is necessary to present your counter-argument I don't see the need of you continuing to post in this discussion. I mean, I get the fact that you disagree with me. That has been noted. But if you aren't going to be anymore specific I don't really see why you keep coming back. I mean, I welcome the discussion but at some point we may just have to agree to disagree.

K:

I see a huge difference. I am not only saying it is irrational for atheists to base their moraliy on their observations of the world, I am saying it is IMPOSSIBLE for them to rationally do so. It is impossible for them, using the laws of logic, to prove any moral statement to be true or false. There just is not the equipment there. Do you agree or disagree to that point?