Philosoft

<strong> How can it be otherwise?

God says, "Thou shalt not do x."
Mankind does x.
God says, "Well, you shouldn't have done that, but I won't send you to eternal punishment no matter how many times you do x if you believe my son is actually the human me and you are really sorry for doing all those x's."

This is what I'm supposed to accept as an objective moral standard?

<strong> Yup. And isn't it funny how evolution predicts that those whose preferences are more conducive to survival are the ones who are still alive? And isn't that what we actually see in a great many cases?

<strong> Well, if my ethical conduct shortens my life span, then I'd have a meaningful bone to pick with that.

jlowder

Dave,
You say that a “universal” refers to a universal standard that carries ontological existence. You haven’t provided any reason why necessary ethical truths do not meet the requirements for a “universal.” You say that it is “meaningless” to speak of necessary ethical truths in the abstract, but you sure seem to understand what I mean when I refer to necessary ethical truths. On the contrary, it is quite meaningful to speak of necessary ethical truths within metaethics.

This doesn’t follow at all. Again, you’re conflating meta-ethics with normative ethics. To make an analogy with another field, I don’t have to know the answers to detailed questions about chemistry (e.g., what happens when chemical A is mixed with chemical B) in order to know that such answers do NOT depend on human opinion. Likewise, I don’t have to know answers to specific normative questions in order to know that moral realism is true.

You have asserted the existence of God. You have not yet provided an argument for God’s existence, much less the existence of the *Christian* God.

It still is not clear that an objective ethics even needs a foundation. But if it does, you haven’t yet provided any argument to believe that objective ethics has a theological foundation.

But this entire exchange is about meta-ethics. The claim, “Morality is objective,” is a meta-ethical claim. Therefore, relevant to my post that started this thread, all the atheist has to do is show that the nonexistence of God is logically compatible with the meta-ethical claim, “Morality is objective.” As long as that is even logically possible, it follows that your “logical” moral argument does not even get off the ground.

Spoken like a true presuppositionalist. Unlike you, I have no problem with inductively correct probabilistic arguments. If there were good probabilistic evidence for God’s existence (i.e., evidence that makes God’s existence more probable than not), I would consider such evidence to be a good reason to embrace theism. But no theist has ever been able to demonstrate such an argument.

That assertion is itself senseless. I don’t have to know the answers to specific questions in order to know that the answers are not determined by human opinion.

Does God have a “foundation”? If not, why not? Why can’t necessary ethical truths exist without an ontological foundation? Why can’t necessary truths exist as abstract objects?


Even coming from a presuppositionalist, I find it difficult to believe you actually buy into what you’re saying. Just about all ethical theories are “meaningful.” Even moral nihilism is “meaningful.” Meaningful isn’t synonymous with “true.” Nihilism is meaningful but false.

And all of those characteristics are non-moral properties. A being can be “absolute, eternal, personal, revealed, [and] non-contingent” without being morally good. You still haven’t offered an argument for the conclusion that basing morality on God’s nature isn’t morally arbitrary.

HRG

Meta, the damage to the cosmological argument has already been done. It is pretty much beyond repair. Any attempt at resurrection would need necromantic abilities. Let the dead rest in peace.

Regards,
HRG

Jack the Bodiless

You are stating that killing the firstborn sons of your foes is a "normative standard of good". The argument that they "weren't innocent" is irrelevant, because (according to the doctrine of original sin) no mere human is "innocent".

Therefore, it is a normative standard of good that all men deserve infinite suffering. It is also a normative standard of good that the offspring of those guilty of specific offenses should be punished for the crimes of their parents (a common theme throughout the Bible).

The corrolary of this is that it cannot be good to allow the offspring of offenders to live. For instance, many convicted murderers have living offspring: they should be rounded up and killed immediately. Similarly, if the US develops a biological agent that will selectively kill children, it should be used on Iraq immediately. This is normal and good.

This is an example of the "psychopath problem": the moral degeneracy that can result from the assumption that God is good. It is also a direct contradiction of the later teachings of Jesus Christ.
Secular morality is defined as "do no harm to others" (usually with the caveat "except to prevent a greater harm"). The unnecessary destruction of human life is immoral by definition: it cannot be otherwise. This is as absolute as your own definition of morality: it is part of what the word "morality" MEANS. To argue otherwise is rather like saying that murder doesn't kill anybody. It is nonsense.

As for why you "should" behave morally: you are essentially arguing that your system is enforced by a more powerful policeman. Human police are neither omniscient nor omnipotent, but they are nevertheless sufficient to cause would-be criminals to think about the possible consequences of their actions (and they have the useful additional attribute of existence independent of faith: unlike God, they are effective even against those who don't believe in them).

DaveJes1979

Philosoft

Dave: 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. God is just - even when He is merciful. Sin never goes unpunished.

Dave: whether evolution predicts this or not, it still demonstrates that you don't have a basis for an ethical "should". It is preferential only.

Dave: you haven't given us any reason to believe that a long or a short life span is "good" - simply that you prefer it. Secondly, I would point out that this ethical framework gives you every reason to mistreat the rest of humanity, so long as it doesn't shorten your life span.


jlowder

Dave: almost definitionally, there is no "universal" in the atheistic universe - only collections of disparate, finite subjects. Even if one does not embrace hard materialism, in what ontological existent does one ground a universal abstraction in?


Dave: it is meaningless because it tells me nothing more than the fact that it is necessary.

Dave: no, I just don't pretend one can do meta-ethics in a vacuum.

Dave: I never said you can't know that moral realism is true. But you go beyond this, and assert that it can be true without God. To back this up, you are going to have to go beyond your "meta-ethics in a vacuum" to justify your meta-ethics.

Dave: I did more than assert this by noting that our conception of God grounds moral norms in God's eternal nature as the Concrete Universal, as eternally good and just in essence.

Dave: you cannot justify your objective ethics without a foundation. A worldview must be able to account for objective ethics if those ethics are to be argued for and justifiable. If that is not the case, then I say that one is holding to ethical behavior arbitrarily and irrationally.

Dave: this exchange is not exclusively about meta-ethics. You haven't shown that the nonexistence of God is logically compatible with the claim "morality is objective". You have formally asserted that morality is objective, but have not given a justification of such an idea from your worldview. I have argued that the atheist's defenitional worldview has no ground for objectivity.

Dave: you seem rather certain about that much!

In any case, you didn't really deal with my criticism of probabalistic knowledge. Everything you just typed already assumes atheism with certainty.

Dave: God does not have a foundation - He is the foundation for ethical truths. And I believe that abstract concepts do carry ontological existence.

Dave: I believe that even false ethical systems are indeed meaningful. The point is that they are inconsistently meaning. Thus they are reducible to meaninglessness because of self-refutation, arbitrariness, and inconsistency.

Dave: one of God's characteristics is that He is perfectly good, though. Thus, morality is grounded in God's nature. Some of the reasons why He is good is that He is personal (not just an uncaring, indifferent "Force"), He is eternal and unchanging (not good today, bad tomorrow), He is non-contingent (thus, a higher epistemological authorities does not exist).


Jack the Bodiless

Dave: that's not the case at all. Although it would be just if God wiped out all of humanity, God has shown man grace so that some might turn back to Him. As such, it is God's prerogative alone to dispense wrath and justice. In former times, when God's hand was on Israel, He used nations as His tools to dispense wrath, under his specific sanction. These were special circumstances - not normative for all nations, the church, or in all ages.

Dave: why do you assume this?

I would also point out that this is question-begging, since what is "unnecessary" presupposes some other norms.

Dave: you have axiomatically DEFINED your conception of morality, but I don't see how you intend on justifying it.

Dave: human police are irrelevant to tyranical dictators. So this causes us to ask - why should a dictator be compelled to adopt your system of morality, and value life as such?

Dave Gadbois

Jack the Bodiless

There was no "just punishment due us". What Adam and Eve did was not our fault. Furthermore, transferring punishment to non-culpable others is unjust by definition. Going back to my Iraq analogy again: let's kill George Bush as punishment for Saddam's invasion of Kuwait!
In the larger sense (i.e. why does it matter to the Universe if humanity survives), there is no "should".

This is a problem?

...Why?
No, YOUR conception of God does this. OUR conception of God is that he does not exist. Even if he DID exist as described in the Bible, there is no Biblical justification for the claim that he is "eternally good and just in essence". The Biblical God is neither omnipotent, nor omniscient, nor omnipresent, nor omnibenevolent.
The foundation is the brute fact of evolution. No further foundation is necessary. There is no reason whatsoever to assume that moral issues are "cosmically" significant: merely significant to human beings.
Yes, that is what you BELIEVE. You believe it because Cornelius Van Til said so. He was, however, wrong.
Existence would be a useful additional attribute, then. What a shame.
You have contradicted yourself. God is NOT a normative standard of good: not normative for all nations, the church, or in all ages.
How can you destroy human life without harming it? It is obvious that killing people harms them: therefore it is, by definition, immoral.
You are not making any sense. How can anyone "justify" a definition? I define a "planet" as a large ball of matter: I can provide more details which can exclude stars and large boulders, but are you saying that I need to go and register it somewhere, like a trademark?
What do you mean by "should"? He would be immoral if he did not. Why should he use my definition, or care about morality at all? Because he's storing up problems for himself if he does not (dissent, revolution, lynching). Why should this matter to humanity? Because most of us would like to see a world in which everyone is free and happy. Why? Empathy. Why empathy? Evolution. Why does it matter to the Universe as a whole? It doesn't, it matters to us.

You still have not identified any flaw in the atheistic materialist wordview: merely aspects that you, personally, don't like. You haven't identified any indication that it isn't factually correct.

Jack the Bodiless

Incidentally, you are still attempting a presuppositionalist argument. As presuppositionalism is useless against unbelievers (and most theists, Christian or otherwise: it is quite obviously baloney), you cannot succeed by this method.

There is an active thread on presuppositionalism <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=56&t=000169" target="_blank">here</a>.

jlowder

jlowder

I don’t know where you get your ideas about what atheism does and does not entail, but your concept of “atheism” isn’t even close to what I mean by atheism. Atheism does not entail materialism (hard or soft) and hence is consistent with the existence of abstract objects. Why can’t universals exist as abstract objects? Abstract objects don’t need to be grounded in a further “ontological existent.”

That’s not what the word “meaningless” means in philosophy. In fact, you pretty much concede that the idea of necessary ethical truths is a meaningful one. I think what you really mean is that the idea is meaningful but irrelevant or uninformative. That’s a very different accusation than the charge of meaninglessness.

Dave, I don’t have to prove or justify anything. You’re the one who claims that atheism and moral realism are logically incompatible, so you have the burden of proof. And you still haven’t refuted my point that I can know moral realism is true without God. Again, without God, I don’t have to know the answers to specific normative questions (e.g., is the death penalty morally justified?) in order to know that the answers to such questions do not depend on human opinion. You haven’t offered an argument against this.

If that was supposed to be an argument for Christian theism, then atheists have nothing to worry about! I refuted that “argument” in my previous post. The basic problem is that you have a dilemma. On the one hand, you can build moral goodness and moral properties into the definition of God, but then posit an independent standard of moral goodness to make God’s moral properties meaningful. Or, on the other hand, you can make God, his commands, or his nature (take your pick) the standard of moral goodness, but at the expense of making God or his nature amoral. See <a href="http://stripe.colorado.edu/~morristo/goodness.html" target="_blank">http://stripe.colorado.edu/~morristo/goodness.html</a>.

Why? Why does objective ethics need a foundation in order to be justifiable? David Brink, arguably the most prominent defender of moral realism today, explicitly rejects foundationalism and argues that objective ethics does not have a foundation. You need to provide a lot more than the mere assertion, “you cannot justify your objective ethics without a foundation.” You need to provide an argument for ethical foundationalism.

1. This is the fallacy of shifting the burden of proof. You have made the claim that objective ethics is inconsistent with the nonexistence of God. I have no responsibility to prove your claim is false. You have not supported your claim. You have asserted, repeatedly, that if God does not exist, morality cannot be objective. However, you haven’t even provided so much as a complete argument for that assertion. In particular, you haven’t provided any reason to believe that (a) an objective ethics needs a foundation or (b) the foundation of objective ethics cannot be secular.

2. On the contrary, I have argued that (a) is questionable and (b) is false.

It’s hard to reply when there is no argument being made. And no, nothing I just typed assumes atheism with certainty.

Since you didn’t answer my question, I’ll ask again. Why doesn’t God have a foundation? Why can’t necessary truths exist without an ontological foundation?

“Inconsistently meaning” is a meaningless statement.

Yes, one of God’s characteristics is that He is perfectly good. But that just shows the need for a standard of moral goodness independent of God.

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

Philosoft

<strong> You are quite adept at speaking in non-sequitur.

<strong> And yet it isn't really a barrier to the alleged ultimate goal of existence.

<strong> Actually, it only makes sense if you assume evolution. That procreating organisms would develop ethics that increase survival is simply an unavoidable consequence; one you can't explain away by asking for some mythical existential "basis."

You can say "goddidit" all you want but don't start assuming that actually explains 'why' or 'how'. You know neither the contents of 'God's will' nor the mechanism by which he instituted his 'laws.' Your explaination explains precisely squat.

<strong> It doesn't matter what you believe. It's quite simple: We observe organisms generally behaving in ways that are more likely to increase life-span. What we don't observe (nor can we assume) is a being that sometimes allegedly cares about our well-being.

<strong> Nonsense. I have said nothing that precludes cooperative behavior being selected over selfish behavior. The order of the day here is complexity in a social framework. The strawman ethical framework that you have constructed is laughably simplistic.

DaveJes1979

Jack the Bodiless

Dave: you have assumed that we do not share in the fault of Adam and Eve. As I stated in the other thread, Adam represented corporate humanity. His sin was not his alone.

Dave: if there is no "should", then you have no ethics, definitionally. If this is the case, why SHOULD I believe anything you tell me?

Dave: if you are not going to accept the Christian conception of God for the sake of argument, then you cannot hope to provide any meaningful critique of it. Your argument comes down to "God doesn't exist...unless He exists."

Dave: evolution, if true, is merely a historical phenomenon. How can you get an ethical "should" from history? Today is merely tomorrow's history, so how can you argue against ANYTHING that occurs? It is just the outworking of evolution. The fittest survive, so where is the complaint?

Dave: is this supposed to address what I actually said?

Dave: you are avoiding any and all interaction with my argumentation. If you want to challenge any of my statements or premises, please do so. This sort of response is a cop out.


Dave: you are confusing God's nature with his individual decrees. God works in different ways in different times, and issues forth decrees that are not always normative. But God's essential nature does not change, nor do His essential decrees (the 10 commandments). Even the non-normative decrees issue forth from His unchanging nature, and the basic principles of goodness He has taught us.

Dave: you have demonstrated that destroying human life is "harm," but you have not told us why causing harm is immoral.

Dave: you have gone beyond a mere definition. In saying what you did, you attempted to construct an ethical framework that you must justify and account for.

Dave: perhaps, perhaps not. China's last emperor lived and died a very comfortable life.

Dave: you have told us what "most of us would like to see", but that is preference only. Why should I accept your preference? There is no ethical mandate in mere preference.


Jack the Bodiless

Dave: if presuppositionalism is "useless" and "baloney," then perhaps you could more meaningfully interact and attempt to rebut the issues I have raised?


jlowder

Dave: because as I pointed out, such a construction makes the ground of ethics impersonal.

Dave: it is "meaningless" because it leaves your ethics in the realm of the Platonic stratosphere where no one can know it. We only know that it is "necessary." Much less can one demonstrate it to be true. This is what has prompted my critique. I deny that atheists can non-arbitrarily hold to an ethical system since they cannot demonstrate or provide warrant for it.

Dave: you say that you don't have to justify your ethical system. But that is the whole point. If you, as an atheist, can't justify your ethical system, then it follows that you hold to it arbitrarily, without warrant, and my claim is proven true. Non-Christian morality is not justified, whereas I have shown how the Christian worldview does so.

Dave: there is no "independent standard."

</a>

Dave: how can you "make God or his nature amoral" if one defines His nature as good?


Dave: I say that you need a foundation, because without such, you cannot justify objective ethics, per se, or any particular ethis that come from such a view. You seem to be quite content with unjustified thought. But if that is the case, why should we be compelled to believe these thoughts? Foundations are necessary for rational justification. Without such, you have merely assertions without warrant. This is a type of fideism, a leap of faith.

You have made the same error as the axiomatic presuppositionalists. That is, one does not prove or argue for one's axiomatic presuppositions, one just believes them. I, as a framework presuppositionalist, do "start" with my presuppositions (and employ circular reasoning), but I believe that presuppositions are proved through transcendental argumentation (providing warrant or justification). Thus, I have avoided the irrational fideism of the axiomatic pressupper.

Dave: normal "burden of proof" does not apply to epistemological issues, because it is PROOF ITSELF that is being discussed. There is no neutrality here. Either your worldview accounts for ethical knowledge, or it does not. I have demonstrated how the Christian worldview does so, and have criticized the possible grounds the atheist has for such a foundation (and have received dismissal, not rebutal to this). My critique has proceeded along these very lines.

Dave: there was an argument. I criticized it on the basis of the fact that to assert something as "probable" or not has already assumed, presuppositionally (with more certainty), other basic criteria that determines what is probable and what is not. You need to justify these hidden presuppositions before your probabalistic charge would be at all compelling.

Dave: God doesn't have a foundation because He is the foundation. Ethical truths not only issue forth from Him (only one of many types of knowledge), but He is the foundation for all other forms of knowledge, such as logic.

Dave: that was a typo. They are inconsistently meaningful.

Dave: not at all. God's characteristic goodness is not merely another INSTANCE of goodness, but it is perfect, infinite goodness. It is non-derivative goodness.


Philosoft

Dave: that was not non-sequitur. I was correcting your distorted view of how Believers are saved. You are going to have to accurately represent the Christian view before you criticize it as not being an objective foundation of morality on the grounds you presented.


Dave: we do know the contents of God's will as revealed in Scripture. 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. There is nothing "right" or "wrong" about it. Today is just tommorrow's history, so how can one argue against anything that happens? The fittest will survive, and it just happens. But "it happens" does not lead us to be compelled that such and such "should happen."

Dave: it doesn't matter what I believe? Should I believe anything you just typed? These sorts of statements are self-refuting.


Dave: you have "said nothing that precludes cooperative behavior" - explicitly. But your appeal to evolution, as such, does not give you any basis to do so. It dictates that the fittest survive, and no more. You can SAY that you think cooperative behavior is ethical - but at that point you are working from some other foundation.


Dave Gadbois

[ May 16, 2002: Message edited by: DaveJes1979 ]</p>