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cKc

I wonder if God ever said we needed to have faith, or if thats something that was created because he couldn't be found.

These questions have some pretty interesting answers which currently are defended using mathematics, yes that is right, they use set theory and fuzzy logic (things are not simply true or false, they have attributes such as necessary, contingent and these are all defined in rigorous mathematics).

The basement argument (again this is a very basic presentation of a complex mathematical argument) :

Premise : We are created with free will (metaphysical free will that is to say that what we decide isn't based on our physical nature)

Argument : The universe we live in is the universe which given free will, will allow the maximum amount of souls to enter into Heaven (this just means enter into a relationship with God)

The Premise is rarely contested because if you reject it then you reject morality, you reject responsibility of actions, and you will be charged with dealing with very controversial stances which few people can deal with or are even prepared to discuss in public. Would you really want to be the person who is quoted as saying something like "Raping children purely for entertainment isn't wrong.".

Thus the Premise is is almost always conceded and the argument is then made on a probabilistic sense which means that someone will argue either :

-It is likely that it is true (very difficult)

-It isn't impossible that it is true (easier)

-It can't be shown to be false (easiest - almost trivial)

In general how the argument is presented depends on who is on the other side. Because most people are not familiar at all with complex logics most people can't even handle framing of the argument and get confused so the weakest form is almost always used.

The way to defeat the last two is to argue :

-It can not be shown to be true

-It isn't impossible that it is false

This negates the argument and just shows that they have no knowledge or make no actual claim. It then forces them to argue the very hard part :

-It is likely that it is true (very difficult)

and you have to defend with either :

-It is likely that it is false (also very difficult)

or simply negate the reasons why they claim it is likely to be true (much easier). This however just leads to a stalemate. If you win you have to put your big boy pants on and make the counter argument which is again fairly mathematical.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/2014 01:30PM by CliffStamp.

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cKc

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Chum
I think it's all about getting the maximum penetration.

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Chum
I think a long, heavy ........ would be ideal.

Quote Bomb.

lol... such a dirty mind.


Chumgeyser on Youtube
E-nep throwing Brotherhood. Charter Member

Besides raping children what happens if you don't concede that premise Cliff?

If metaphysical free will is false then we are just machines and are not responsible for our actions, there is no such thing as morality, there is no purpose of life (in an existential meaning, no more than the purpose of a toaster is to make toast for example), people have no inherent value, and things like rights/freedom are without meaning. In fact even the concept of life itself becomes artificial and is reduced to things such as having the property of self-replication. Now to be clear I am not saying it is impossible to argue from this perspective, I am just saying that few people will do it and few people can handle even basic opposition.

A standard attack when people concede that objective morality does not exist (which often is hinged as proof in an IIF sense for God) that immediately they can not deal with the question "So are you saying that it isn't true that we ought not to do X?" and X is some extreme activity which no one would want to defend in public. As an example of this, very recently Krauss was asked if it was true that incest was wrong. Most people will say yes, but that concedes objective morality unless you redefine what wrong means.

Krauss tried to make an argument that it is based on cultural norms and the fact that it leads to damaged genetic material but was pressed to defend the premise that if a brother/sister or mother/son wanted to engage in sex and took precautions to not conceive that he didn't see anything wrong with it. He then had to deal with it being plastered all over the internets that "Krauss argues that incent isn't wrong!" and it isn't even a heavy misquote.

Can you defend these arguments, sure but while they can be easily argued in an academic sense, in a public forum few will tackle it, especially if they have a career which is sensitive to public influence.

Cliff, it's very easy to show that cultural and social determinism have really such a huge effect on the way we see things that "free will" can only be virtual, at least for 99% of mankind. Public morality is universal (i.e. ethic norms), that is a condition for society to last generations, yet its "content" varies. On the question of incest, if asked if it's right or wrong, the answer nobody can contest is that it's considered very wrong to the vast majority of social milieux of our society.
But it has to be recognized that this is a norm, and it could be different.

This might be a problem with people thinking their moral values are intangible because they are based on God's revealed Truth, but also with people who happen to have a kind of religious faith for "progress", and think their values (for exemple: same-sex marriage and adoption) are the only acceptable ones, and all the rest is conservative, if not crypto-nazi. On the other hand, I tend to think argueing with this kind of people often leads nowhere.

Free will might be a potentiality of the human mind/soul, but social and cultural determinism avoid us experimenting it (if it does actually exist). We probably are "provided" with the tools to fight these, but the more we learn, the more we see we're biased from birth, and can't exactly tell how deeply it's embedded in us. This casts the question of free will beyond the limit of any practical concern: it makes it purely theorical. Then the argument only relates to so few people (those who, if they exist, can make use of a free will completly unparasited by social and cultural biases) that it makes the whole thing unsignificant.

The way you phrased the argument practically restricts it to abrahamic monotheists. But on the other hand, only abrahamic monotheists (and mostly christians and muslims, we don't hear Jews much on this question) really split hairs about uppercase-g God and the world's creation, so that's consistent. But before they even start to argue, and because of the way you formulated the argument (which, IMO, is not really how people see things), they can in very few words be faced a dilemma:
-if the universe we live in is the world were the higher amount of souls enters a relationship with God
-and the higher possible amount of souls is: all (each and every one)
-then we live in the universe were everybody "goes to Heaven", even child rapists and incestuous relatives.
And of course, this surely contradicts all abrahamic sacred books, and even secular ethics of the majority.
Most religious people want at least some to "go to Hell", they want a divine justice (with punishments and rewards), rather than a divine love without condition, so I think your phrasing of the argument is not very relevant.

But I think, to many people, there is no real argument. I mean it can not be formulated logically. In this debate there is faith, passion, an personal interest. It can't just be blown away and the debate kept to the neat ring of proper logic. We have to legitimate ourselves and our believes to go on in life. We have to have a right and wrong, a true or false, it acts as something that holds us together as a person, but also individuals as a society. That's why purely logical debates are extremely rare: as soon as one feels "cornered", he'll try some trick to get out of it. Debates are rarely some sort of gentleman's duel, with a strict set of rules everyone holds as sacred. It's violent (psychologically), it's nasty, and nothing's forbidden, all tricks are allowed.

People will promote the logical approach if they can get it to support their believes/opinions, and discard it or meddle with it (using paralogisms and sophisms) as soon as they can't. Most people don't consider it to be intrinsically morally wrong or unethical not to use exclusively proper logic, as long as it doesnt sound too treacherous, and doesn't go against widely recognized moral values (if one was defending child rape with the purest form of logic, this would be considered so much more wrong than somebody using all kind of sophisms to prove Hitler was a bad person).

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Madnumforce
Cliff, it's very easy to show that cultural and social determinism have really such a huge effect on the way we see things that "free will" can only be virtual, at least for 99% of mankind.

Metaphysical free will isn't the position that actions are independent of the environment. A toaster doesn't choose anything, it simply reacts to the environment based on its physical nature. Metaphysical free will says we are not toasters, there is that which is apart from our physical nature - hence metaphysical, which gives us the ability to choose and not simply react to our environment. This argument isn't simply an academic exercise because it is critical to issues such as responsibility, liability and consequences for actions.

As we understand more about what genes control behavior for example then we are coming to an understanding that they are simply expressions of genes. This is a very radical shift in perception away from choice and to simple determinism. A similar change is to recognize that patterns of behavior are controlled by disease. This changes our view and thus treatment of people with those behaviors. If someone has ALS do you then blame them for choosing to get sick and die? We are growing in our understanding that many behaviors are simply disease based and can/should be treated as such.

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On the question of incest, if asked if it's right or wrong, the answer nobody can contest is that it's considered very wrong to the vast majority of social milieux of our society.

Yes and you have just noted that moral is that which is popular. If you are in a village and you see someone (insert offense here) and if the rest of the village sees that as ok then you are actually compelled to do it. That is what morality means, what one ought to do. If you object to it then you are the immoral one. If you move beyond village based views the problem is the same, the scale is just larger. The implications of this are obvious and few people can deal with the almost instant Hitler defense that this argument will provoke.

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This might be a problem with people thinking their moral values are intangible because they are based on God's revealed Truth

That isn't the way the argument goes, you have it reversed. The argument is basically that since objective morality exists it is proof that God exists (as there has to be some source for the objective nature).

There are people who reject objective morality but in general few will rarely take this argument in public because you have to defend the public proposition that (insert radical action here) isn't wrong and that if enough people believe it was true that (insert radical action here) then it would in fact then be perfectly moral.

Few people also actually live their life in this way because it means they can not make an objective refusal of actions of others. If popular opinion was that (insert action here) was right then you actually have an obligation to allow it, in fact you are obligated to make it happen regardless of how you think about the manner and regardless of its nature and consequence to you and yours. If you don't then you are the one being immoral.

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The way you phrased the argument practically restricts it to abrahamic monotheists.

It is the answer to the common argument used against why the Christian God can not exist (there is evil hence there can not be God because God is an omni-max being). The Hindu God for example has the exact same defense of why there is evil just with the added layer that death/rebirth are cyclic, there isn't just one shot at Heaven.

In general God refers to that which is the creator, to differentiate it from beings (gods) which are just above-human. For example Indra is referred to as a god in Hindu culture. However a lot of it is translation issues as Indra is actually a deva which doesn't translate as God, the traditional Christian equivalent would be the ArchAngel Michael.

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...they can in very few words be faced a dilemma

There is no dilemma. The argument is that the maximum amount of souls choose a relationship with God not the maximum amount of souls have a relationship with God. If you choose to (insert offense here) then you have not made the choice to have a relationship with God. This is the modal free will defense of the problem of evil.

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I mean it can not be formulated logically.

Yes it can, as noted in the above these arguments are made by modern logical form. I have given lay interpretations but they all have formal expressions which are similar to this :



Now you can not think about it, you can not have an actual moral code, you can have a moral code based on popular opinion - but these are not the only possibilities. There are also people who actually do think about these ideas, develop moral codes based up on them and can defend them rationally, not simply make emotional pleas or appeals to popularity.



Edited 12 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2014 05:57PM by CliffStamp.

I see what you mean about free will. But having the actual capacity to chose between something unfit to allow entering a relationship with uppercase-g God and another thing also unfit to this purpose (because of cultural and social bias or gene-determined behaviours) makes free will quite irrelevant.

"Objective morality" is a concept. Nowadays we can contemplate it. Does the concept describes a reality or is it it purely part of a Weltanaschauung is a dull debate, but what is certain is that the uppercase-g God concept we have today did not always exist (yet people had a morality). Thus it was impossible to argue that "since objective morality exists it is proof that God exists". We may take for granted that, precisely, since objective morality exists it's a proof that God exists, because we somehow embedded it in the concept of uppercase-g God itself. It's tautologic. No god of the 5th century B.C. gaulish pantheon can have it's existence proven by the existence of objective morality, and yet these were the only gods they could think of and conceive. Uppercase-g God meant nothing to them, and this would not be appaear as aa reasoning to them ("Yeah, you just made up that "God" of yours. We know where our morals come from, it's [insert what their belief system actually told about the origin of morals], and not your God").

But I don't quite get what you mean by "objective morality". Public morality is a socio-cultural consensus. This socio-cultural consensus "exists" in the same way as temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of "individual" particles (correct me if I don't phrase it correctly). Individual morality, though personnal, is deeply influenced by the environment. The effect of morality, either public or individual, is real and objective. What you call "objective morality", to me, is the fact that there exist in almost everyone some sort of mental container for moral values and ethics. This I wouldn't reject. But I don't think moral values thermselves are objective. Morality is a social necessity, and also for survival as a specie, but on many regards it's arbitrary and varies in time and space.

What I understand of your brick in formal logic is that it's not muggle's language. Then it's not about what muggles call God. I see nowhere in this demonstration that the word "God" is used. It's just about objects/ensembles with defined properties and the relations that can be made between them. Then you could arbitrary call the thing it's supposed to prove the existence of "Satan" (it makes absolutely no difference if you set the same properties and show the same relations). You could even call it "rocking chair with a peacock on it" if you want. Logically it's perfectly okay. Yet peoples hate Satan and it's supporters, and nobody cares about someone who would try to prove that a rocking chair with a peacock on it exists. They will use the logical demonstration even though they don't understand it or it's logically false as long as they think that it proves and support their point, their own "demonstration".

A logical demonstration might proves that something with a certain set of characteristics exists. Calling it God is extremely misleading, because people assume much much more than the actual characteristics you've set for the demonstration. It would be like saying Hitler was a misunderstood genius... only you're talking exclusively about his painting skills. To people, God is in the Bible, the Quran, the Torah, not in two or three lines of a formal logic demonstration. I don't reject the logical demonstration, but the way it's received if you call "God" the object the demonstration is supposed to prove existing. What we conceive as God has not been defined on blackboards of 20th century logicians, but through centuries of extremely complex human history. You'll probably write it's off topic, but actually I think it's central: we live in a muggle's word, in which formal logic doesn't count much, and faith does.

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Madnumforce
But having the actual capacity to chose between something unfit to allow entering a relationship with uppercase-g God and another thing also unfit to this purpose (because of cultural and social bias or gene-determined behaviours) makes free will quite irrelevant.

If metaphysical free will is false there can be no choice, it is critical to the defense of faith hence why it is called the free will defense. The fact that a cultural pressure may be against God's will is not relevant to if the action is that which forms a relationship with God.

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... the uppercase-g God concept we have today did not always exist (yet people had a morality). Thus it was impossible to argue that "since objective morality exists it is proof that God exists".

We had disease before we knew germs existed. Does this mean that germs can not be the cause of disease?

You are confusing the ontological argument (that something exists) with the epistemological one (that there is knowledge of it). The argument for why objective morality entails God is an ontological one, not an epistemological one.

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We may take for granted that, precisely, since objective morality exists it's a proof that God exists, because we somehow embedded it in the concept of uppercase-g God itself. It's tautologic.

God is not defined as the standard of objective morality. A consequence of having omni-max characteristics is that it would be and solve the is-ought problem through modern Divine Command Theory as an answer to the Euthyphro dilemma. The argument would only be circular if the definition of God was altered to allow the argument that objective morality entails God which didn't happen.

A circular argument for God would be similar to "God exists because God is that which allowed me to write this sentence." God was simply defined to allow/ensure the conclusion was a direct consequence of the premise. The arguments that objective morality entail God and even the ontological arguments didn't create new characteristics of God to ensure the arguments were sound and valid.

If you ask me to prove a duck exists and I show you a duck then it is nonsensible to say "Well all you did was define a duck in such a way that it existed!" . No, the definition existed before the argument was made. The definition just allows you to say a duck exists vs some long drawn out description of the the thing known as a duck exists.

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But I don't quite get what you mean by "objective morality".

Objective morality is a branch of moral realism (moral propositions exist/have meaning) which notes that morality is mind-independent. Even if everyone on the planet felt (insert any action here) was right that would not justify that it was a moral truth. Objective morality says that morality is an objective property in the same way that gravity is an objective property. This is talking about the ontological nature of morality (how things are) not the epistemological nature (how we know about them).

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But I don't think moral values thermselves are objective.

A thing becomes moral simply when enough people think it is moral? This means that you ought to do (insert any action here) simply because enough people believe it is morally right?

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A logical demonstration might proves that something with a certain set of characteristics exists.

Yes, and when those are the characteristics of God then it obviously shows that God exists, that is how all such arguments work (X exists).

If you want to prove that some fossil is a transition between two stages you have to show it has a number of properties. It has to have the right age, be in the right place, have a number of physical characteristics, be leading to various physical characteristics and have a number of physical characteristics being lost/abandoned. With that argument presented would you them jump in and say "Hey, you just defined X and Y so it had to be true it was a transitional fossil!" . That is irrational because the definitions existed before the argument, they were not changed to make the argument valid (i.e. X came from Y because X is defined to be the thing that evolved from Y - that is circular / definitional).

The arguments for God combine or are layered in the same manner. Essentially you take all the characteristics of God and then show that they all can be rationalized. The ontological arguments show than an omni-max being exists. This combined with cosmological and fine tuning type arguments rationalize Deism. To get to Theism other arguments have to be made to show that there is a personal relationship with God. Again no different than if you want to show a fossil is transitional you have to make a layered argument to show it was coming from something, is something, and is going towards something.

As for people refusing to think about things rationally, yes that is why most people don't actually contribute to knowledge. It takes a lot of work to know and understand something. If you want to read formal logic then you have to understand the language, just like if you want to read a metallurgical text you have to learn all the definitions, otherwise the words are symbols without meaning. Some people are willing to do the work, some people are not. If you are not willing to make rational arguments in general well then it is very unlikely you will ever know anything about the subject.

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What we conceive as God has not been defined on blackboards of 20th century logicians, but through centuries of extremely complex human history.

People have been making very formal logical arguments for God as long as they have been making logical argument for anything. Descartes arguments themselves are are not recent by any means and they are long predated by the Proslogion written in 1078. There have always been those that took the subject seriously in an attempt to understand. Much of the work was based on the formal approach of logic/rationality as developed by Aristotle (~400 BCE) who strongly influenced Saint Thomas Aquinas for one. However again, the epistemology and the ontology of the nature of God are two very different arguments and one can be true while the other false (a thing can exist even if there is no knowledge of it).

I noted the formal logic simply because you said it could not be argued in such a manner. Now unless the listener is trained in formal logic it won't mean anything hence apologists rarely take that approach because the audience won't understand it. The most complex of the modern Theistic arguments is the one which finally negated the logical problem of evil. However this argument won't mean anything to people who don't have the background in mathematics to understand modal logic (an extension of logic which includes and separates things such as necessary truths vs possible truths). However that doesn't mean it isn't true simply because there is ignorance of it.

The modal argument is so strong that no one uses the logical problem of evil any more (there is evil in the world therefore God can not exist as an omni-max being would not allow evil). It has been abandoned in all the literature that is not a trivial thing at all. It has been replaced by the probabilistic argument of evil which is however a much weaker stance. This is a huge step down and is analogous to someone moving from the position that God does not exist to the position that it does not seem likely that God exists which is currently how the problem of evil is framed because of the modal answer which completely negates the first and much stronger contention.



Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2014 05:31PM by CliffStamp.

I don't think the human mind have any legitimacy to express ontological statements. One can live under the impression that he can actually do the economy of neglecting his "limitness", but that is an illusion.
Are White persons intrinsically superior to African people? During the 18th century it was widely accepted as an objective truth. They were racist and not even ashamed of it, because they thought it was the bare reality without any socio-cultural bias layer: they were absolutely certain to describe "things as they are". This was not things as they were, this was their perception, through a whole lot of conceptual grids, norms, values, references.

We are not more "gridless" than any society anytime anywhere. Of course, these perceptions don't spurt out from the void, there must be something "real" inducing them in us. But imagine you put a spring balance into a hot pan: because of heat the spring will probably deform, and the needle indicate a value. It does not mean that the pan is actually -12 grams hot. Our conceptual grid might be just as unadequate to perceive "things as they are", and yet give some kind of result (or "reading" ). Cause I don't argue that "things as they are" don't exist, I say it's completly out of our bounds to claim they do or don't. Maybe even our conception of the modalities of being/existing are crooked and unadequate.

Formal logic is one perceiving grid amongst many other. It may claim as much as it wants to be able to describe "things as they are", it's not any more reliable than a person's claim to be God's prophet and to share Its Truth with mankind. Nowadays we would easily tend to say this so-called prophet is deluded, if not straight out crazy. But the "authority" of formal logic (though I admit nobody pays it much respect or consideration, but few people will contest it either) is also self-justified. A logical demonstration has effect only on those who subscribe to its principles beforehand. To a person for which the Bible (read litteraly) is the be-all end-all, a logical demonstration has no effect, because what he perceives as real and true and "how things are" has a different basis and obeys to different principles.

Regarding morality, it's the same thing. Any action (or even thought) might be judged good and positive according to some standards, okay and tolerable according to some other, and harmful and wrong according to a third. I think that judgement is objective, in the way that all people thinking child rape is wrong will condemn child rape, and no people who think it's okay will condemn it ("thinking" is not the right word: it has to be a value deeply embedded in the person, not just a passing opinion). But it seems to me that this "objective morality" concept conceives morality as some sort of egregore, which would have the "power" to judge actions/thoughts right or wrong by itself.

And yes, I think morals, though much more deeply grounded and long-term evoluting, are like fashion: things are good-looking or moral (or poor-looking or immoral) only in the eyes of an observer. Things are to be judged good or bad looking, or morally right or wrong only according to a certain perception. It might have been harder to realise in past centuries, because society was stable and segmented, there was few means of communication, and not much conscience of the past or far away, so we could live under the impression that morals were intangible (because we only knew and lived "under the rule" of the ones of our immediate environment).

But now there is massive international migration, an easy access to knowledge of the past and far away, and means of communication like never dreamt of before. We can very easily face moral values and concepting grids quite different from the ones we've been taught/raised into. Something right in one moral system is wrong in another, and we can't just solve wich of these moral system is right and which is wrong (unless we're partial). It is possible that there exist one moral system which is absolutely right, but we have no clue it does exist, and should it we wouldn't be able to spot it if faced with it.

You write: "Yes, and when those are the characteristics of God then it obviously shows that God exists". You just completly neglect that these aren't THE characteristics of God. This is ONE set of characteristic attributed to God, amongst others. It isn't any more legitimate than those defined in the catholic Church's credo or the muslim Shahada, for exemple. This set of characteristics is chosen ad hoc to prove God's necessary existence. You (not you litterally, but those who made the argument) shows the existence of something only very remotly related to what is perceived as God for the majority of people. It's not an appeal to the masses, but a fact: logical demonstrations of God's existence grew on the spread and monopole of belief systems that aren't essentially logical.

In other words: the logical arguments started out of interest (expand legitimacy through a new way of self-justification). The only exception is Aristotle (and his disciples, I guess), but he would have been forgotten if it wasn't for muslim and christian recycling and self-justification. It isn't a moral statement, but reveals a very strong limit to the "reach"/power of this argument (set of unusual characteristics chosen ad hoc in order to prove God's existence, these unusual characteristics may have been reintroduced/promoted in medieval times, when the only education cursus were religious, precisely to support a new, logical self-justification method).

Sorry, I thought it would be a shorter answer, but once I get started...

In my mind, Cliff and Mad are zombies, having this discussion over tea and brains.


Chumgeyser on Youtube
E-nep throwing Brotherhood. Charter Member

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Madnumforce
I don't think the human mind have any legitimacy to express ontological statements.

That is an ontological position.

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Are White persons intrinsically superior to African people? During the 18th century it was widely accepted as an objective truth.

You are still confusing ontological vs epistemological.

The fact that the properties of a thing are not known does not mean a thing can/does not have specific properties. To reject that rejects the entire foundation of rational discourse. It can obviously be known that a thing exists without knowing the actual nature/properties. I do not know for example the color of your hair but that doesn't mean it is unknown that your hair has color as a property.

In regards to epistemology, yes many do not produce 1:1 truth mappings (vs reality). But knowledge isn't defined in that sense in many epistemologies. Science doesn't define knowledge in that manner for example nor does math/logic.

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Maybe even our conception of the modalities of being/existing are crooked and unadequate.

Many epistemologies have among the presuppositions that not only are our reasoning faculties not ideal, the data sets we work with are incomplete. This doesn't mean knowledge can not be produced because knowledge is not defined in that manner. This kind of view of knowledge should have been abandoned when you are introduced to science in elementary school.

If someone asks me who made that knife and point to the Ridiculous then I would say "Kyley Harris, cKc knives." However this does not mean "It is known, and it can not be false, that ..." . What it means is "It can be justified with reasonable certainty, that ..." Various epistemologies provide ways of creating reasonable justification through layers of coherent truths.

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A logical demonstration has effect only on those who subscribe to its principles beforehand. To a person for which the Bible (read litteraly) is the be-all end-all, a logical demonstration has no effect, because what he perceives as real and true and "how things are" has a different basis and obeys to different principles.

Accepting the Bible doesn't mean you have to abandon logic. The idea that you have to abandon logic to accept the Bible is about as accurate as when Ray Comfort argues evolution is false because he has found a banana.

It has already been noted that the arguments being discussed are made in formal logic by theists who accept the Bible (and/or various other works). They are highly educated philosophers who publish in peer reviewed journals. If you think you can trivially refute the Bible using logic then try to debate a modern Christian apologist and prepare to get Crocoduck'ed.

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And yes, I think morals, though much more deeply grounded and long-term evoluting, are like fashion ...

Again so I ask you, the only thing that is needed for something to be moral it that enough people believe it to be true? This mean then that you would accept that you ought to do it regardless of the nature of that action and its consequences.

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You write: "Yes, and when those are the characteristics of God then it obviously shows that God exists". You just completly neglect that these aren't THE characteristics of God. This is ONE set of characteristic attributed to God, amongst others.

As I noted, the argument is made by laying out the characteristics of God and then proving that they can be justified. It is obvious that someone arguing for Christianity will not lay out the arguments as someone who was describing Hinduism.

However an individual can also lay out an argument for string theory and another a loop quantum gravity. Do you then conclude these different viewpoints mean that gravity doesn't exist, science doesn't generate knowledge, people can't know anything about gravity or even if it exists.

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This set of characteristics is chosen ad hoc to prove God's necessary existence.

I have already pointed out that is incorrect.

The arguments used to support the existence of God such as noted in the above use existing attributes of God and show they can be justified. The cosmological argument, the fine tuning argument, the modal argument against evil, the ontological arguments all use attributes of God which long predate the arguments. You noted this once and I corrected it, to repeat it is simply stating a lie - please take that elsewhere.

Now if you want to actually argue that the fine tuning argument, or the modal argument, or the cosmological argument created new attributes for God simply to allow those arguments to be made then by all means show that. If you could then you would have quite an argument because the fine tuning argument alone (quite modern) is considered as one of the strongest arguments y even staunch hard-atheists.

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In other words: the logical arguments started out of interest (expand legitimacy through a new way of self-justification).

The reason that some people make logical and rational arguments for God is simply because they are logical and rational people. They just make logical and rational arguments in general.

However even if someone did create some new way of thinking (which has been done many times) doesn't make the conclusion any less valid. When Newton invented the Calculus to solve gravitational paths no one argued his conclusion was any less true because he had to invent a completely new type of math. The only thing that matters if the method is actually valid, not that it was created because he specifically wanted to prove something.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2014 12:48AM by CliffStamp.

I completly agree that one might both use logic and accept the Bible. But "accepting the Bible" is not the same as taking it litteraly, and be certain, as I wrote, that it is the be-all end-all. And what I mean by "be-all end-all" is really: everything written in the Bible is true. They don't take it as "reasonable certainty", but as absolute certainty. This kind of people does exist, though they are quite rare. The vast majority of christians, muslims and Jews take their sacred texts with quite a bit of salt and critical distance... in this way going with the flow, cause what might have been called "devotion" or "faith" and seen as a positive thing in past centuries is now being called "blind faith" or "fanatism", and is rather pejorative.

You're talking about the "reasonable certainty" we have. Do you have any doubts that 18th century racialists used arguments they thought and viewed as "reasonable"? No one will ever come and say: "Hey listen, I'll tell you my opinion, though its completly stupid, irrelevant, self-contradicting, not backed by anything and I don't even care it to be, unlegitimate, most likely dead wrong, unreasonable, not usefull to anything, unpleasant, and barely intelligible". No one will ever admit it to himself! In what way is the knowledge we use and produce "reasonable"? Only because it is practical/useful. If we were to doubt everything, as a civilisation we would surely disappear in a matter of decades. That is not what anybody wants.

Now you asked about morality. It's not a question of quantity, but rather of mean concentration. If I say "I ate a steak yesterday", it won't be shocking to anyone in my present and usual social environment. If I was a hardcore vegan, living amongst hardcore vegans, this would be seen as absolutely disgusting and almost intolerable, and banning me (from a community or association) might be seriously considered by some. Imagine the bell curve of a somewhat normal distribution: y axis is the headcount and on the x axis is the level of support/indifference/disgust reaction to a given behaviour or speech. This is "public morality", and the bell curve summit and width varies as fonction of time, space, human community considered (in the same space and same time could live two or more communities that have very few interractions, and have very different morals) and "stimulus" (a behavior or speech to react to). Of course, these statements have a pseudo-ontological tone only out of practicality concerns .

I don't know what you call "modern" about the fine-tuned universe argument, but it looks like a modernized version of the "how the world works together well" argument that is a 17th and 18th century commonplace. Of course, this kind of argument could not really be made before "natural philosophy" widely raised an interest for nature, physical laws, etc amongst educated people and the upper class. Anyway.
Okay, so to get back to one of my points: do you honestly believe these arguments (cosmological, ontological, etc) were constructed fortuitously and accidentally, on randomly chosen God's attributes/characteristics? If not, then they must be the result of an intent. An intent to prove God's existence. In order to achieve this, to fulfill this intent, specific God's attriubutes/characteristics have been selected amongst the huge list you can make, so that it will allow to build an argument that holds up. Then by definition they are ad hoc: "for a purpose". Insinuating I am a liar for stating this obvious thing is sorta rude.

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Madnumforce
I completly agree that one might both use logic and accept the Bible. But "accepting the Bible" is not the same as taking it litteraly, and be certain, as I wrote, that it is the be-all end-all.

There are lots of people who view the Bible as the literal word of God meaning specifically that it is the expressed covenant between God and man. This doesn't mean logic has to be abandoned, in fact if you abandon logic you can't interpret it as anything, literal or otherwise. There are in fact multiple meanings for literal in the sense of the Bible (or any historical document). One is that it simply means exactly what the words mean, and another is far less strict and simply means that it is not metaphorical but has to be interpreted in context of place, time and general usage of language. There are bible scholars who take both approaches to Bible literacy.

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You're talking about the "reasonable certainty" we have.

Your argument appears to be what is claimed to be known changes and thus "well you could be wrong". This argument is common in very basic anti-science rants, it shows ignorance of epistemology on even a basic level and lack of even basic consequential interpretation. The age of the universe for example changes, but it does not do so in a random manner as we learn.If you actually were to look at what is being learned through modern epistemologies you would see two critical properties : convergence and refinement.

In fact when you say :

"No one will ever come and say: "Hey listen, I'll tell you my opinion, though its completly stupid, irrelevant, self-contradicting, not backed by anything and I don't even care it to be, unlegitimate, most likely dead wrong, unreasonable, not usefull to anything, unpleasant, and barely intelligible"."

Responsible people actually do that. I get asked questions all the time and I simply tell people I don't know. Chum has noted on this forum many times that I don't guess about things. I often post up results on knives/steels and openly state that the conclusions are not well supported and are very tentative. I am not the only person who doesn't ramble on about things expressing unfounded opinions and in general just discusses the things they know. Critical to actually making a claim to know is in fact what are the boundaries, hence claims are thus made by saying something like :

"It appears to be true based on the following observations/presuppositions, that X holds in Y conditions. If this is true then Z should also be observed and it is falsified if any of the following is observed, A, B , C .."

Knowledge is gained by spiraling out to ever wider knowns and as well focusing in on details with time revealing more of the parts that are still fuzzy. What you are doing is jumping from the fact that since we know more than we did yesterday about heredity that means that we can't say we know anything about banana reproduction and it is just as likely that tomorrow bananas could start giving birth to fire breathing nuclear powered elephants.

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Now you asked about morality. It's not a question of quantity, but rather of mean concentration.

So again, is all that you need to justify an action as moral that enough people in close proximity to you view it as moral, regardless of the nature of the action or its consequences?

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I don't know what you call "modern" about the fine-tuned universe argument, but it looks like a modernized version of the "how the world works together well" argument that is a 17th and 18th century commonplace.

It is based in very modern physics and the understanding of natural laws which is only very recent in terms of specificity (as in less than a decade) and the argument is framed in a probabilistic sense. In fact much of the math is very recent in regards to things like how do you determine if an event was random or show intent/creation. This isn't a trivial problem at all and uses some pretty complex math such as self-organizing behaviors.

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Okay, so to get back to one of my points: do you honestly believe these arguments (cosmological, ontological, etc) were constructed fortuitously and accidentally, on randomly chosen God's attributes/characteristics?

No, they were made, as noted several times on a preexisting characteristics.

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Then by definition they are ad hoc: "for a purpose". Insinuating I am a liar for stating this obvious thing is sorta rude.

Again, that isn't how the arguments have been made, repeating it when you know it is false is lying, please take that elsewhere.

And again, if you want to actually argue that the arguments cited are actually ad hoc meaning they actually created new and specific attributes for God to make those arguments valid / sound then by all means show that.

Again, if you could do that you would have quite an impressive argument because the modern theistic arguments cited are not at all trivially refuted and are made in actually peer reviewed academic journals.

I won't answer on the Bible reading. You just contradict for the sake of contradiction, not in any way bringing up any interesting point.

It seems you want to see me as a dumb and ignorant person, while my point is a "philosophical" one that, it seems, you can't conceive.
I'm not talking about the changing estimation of the age of the unverse, I'm talking about the fact that, in different places, in different times, or even different social environnements in our own society, people don't care about the age of the universe, and don't even conceive it. A whole different Weltanschauung. Just like you don't tell yourself that you should go to Hermes temple and make a nice offering/sacrifice to allow better chances of success in signing an important contract. It doesn't cross your mind the slightest second (not Hermes, and no other god, not even any remain of superstition), even though you know of Hermes, and the practice of offerings/sacrifice. Now imagine what a 8th century peasant, who's furthest journey was two walking days from his village (the vast majority of people didn't have our conception of time and hours-minutes-seconds back then), thought about the age of the universe. Actually, Jeanne d'Arc, during her Inquisition trial, couldn't even accurately tell her age (and she was about 20). I mean that kind of Weltanschauung difference.

You think in a very "Cliffstampocentric" way... like most humans always did. And people were just argueing on and on about the level of confidence they could have in their own way of measuring certainty (God's word, omens and superstition, immemorial traditions and tales of the elders, etc), self-justifying. Science tends to build models that have a good predicting capacity (and ever more accurate), probably better than any ever used in history, I have no problem at all with that statement/fact. But that's not my point. My point is that other systems, paradigms, Weltanschauungen don't get their legitimacy from predicting capacity (at least not of this sort, and not in this way). The birth and rise of science is an anthropological contingency: it could not have been. Unless you believe it's part of the plan of a supernatural power/being that would have made it happen anyway.

About morals/tehic, for the last time: of course moral values are not written in the stars for all mankind to follow like some revealed truth knowing no time or space boundaries! Moral values are required, from an evolution point of view: they allow a society to hold itself, to share something and to self-manage. But the exact values differe. If murder is widely condemned, it's out of practicality. In most "rights", killing itself is not prohobited, sometimes it's even required against people who transgressed the law. You can have personnal views on what is moral and what is not, yet nobody cares as long as the law is based on "public" morals. One can think it's perfectly okay to rape the corpse of a baby, or one can think it's rude to look a stranger's shoes for longer than 7/10th of a second, the necrophile will be seen as a disgusting pervert, and there might be extreme violence against him if the mean/average opinion is that it's a disgusting perversion maybe even deserving a painfull and cruel death, and the one with the shoe issue won't get any judgemental remark for not looking long enough at people's shoes in the subway. The farthest your own moral views/values are from the average of your environement (and you act on it), the harder it will be to be well integrated, especially if you allow yourself things that are usually seen as bad.

Actually, I don't understand morals can be conceived any other way than a social convention/norm. Do you think that entire societies are wrong if they don't fit the moral values you've been taught or adhere to now? Do you think some of your own moral values are off? Do you think what you think is right or wrong now has always been so and will always be?

Lastly, I checked the definition of ad hoc in English, and it's slightly different than in French. In French it's less lexicalized, and just means something adequate and fit to a purpose/task (like: "A phone is an ad hoc device to call someone"), in English it's more restrictive, and of that slightly different tone I was not aware. That was just a misunderstanding.

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Madnumforce
I'm talking about the fact that, in different places, in different times, or even different social environnements in our own society, people don't care about the age of the universe, and don't even conceive it.

Yes, lots of people are ignorant about lots of things, it has no impact at all about the ontological issues being discussed.

There are of course interesting questions of theistic epistemology related to ignorance such as how can the Bible be the Covenant of Christ with people who are not even aware it exists?

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About morals/tehic, for the last time: of course moral values are not written in the stars for all mankind to follow like some revealed truth knowing no time or space boundaries!

I am not asking you about your position, I am asking you about the consequence of it.

Again, is all that is required for you to accept an action as something you ought to do is that enough people in close proximity to you think/feel it is moral regardless of the nature of the action or its consequences?

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Actually, I don't understand morals can be conceived any other way than a social convention/norm.

I have noted the Theistic framework for objective morality in the above through modern Divine Command Theory which resolves the is-ought problem.

There are non-theistic frameworks of course as well. Plato for example had the forms (morality exists in perfect ideal references), Aristotle had the telos (morality exists in the expression of inherent perfect goals). More recently people like Kagan have argued for objective atheistic morality on the basis of a perfect reference being but and this is the critical part, he doesn't argue such a being physically has to exist.

Kagan's argument is analogous to claiming you can know the nature of a perfect circle even if it only exists as a concept. Further you can actually know how close/far something is from being a perfect circle even though again you have never handled/seen an actual perfect circle. Similar you can know if an action is moral by comparison even if the perfectly moral reference doesn't actually exist aside from a concept.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2014 03:11PM by CliffStamp.

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CliffStamp
Yes, lots of people are ignorant about lots of things, it has no impact at all about the ontological issues being discussed. There are however very interesting questions of epistemology related to Theism and ignorance such as for example how can it be expected that individuals form a relationship with God when people live and die without ever knowing the Bible so how can it be the Covenant of Christ with them?

It's interesting to christians. A Jew doesn't care, as in Judaism there is no such thing as the Covenant of Christ. And asatruar and wiccans couldn't care less about uppercase-G God Covenant at all. Not because they're ignorant, but because it's not an issue for them. Can you conceive different people have different Weltanschauungen, and it doesn't make them inferior?

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Yes, I am not asking you about your position, I am asking you about the consequence of it.

Again, is all that is required for you to accept an action as something you ought to do is that enough people in close proximity to you think/feel it is moral regardless of the nature of the action or its consequences?

I did not use the term "people in close proximity", only you did. I wrote about society and social environment, which is a relatively vast social group (not just a few relatives). And not only actions are forbiden/mandatory, but also speechs and thoughts. Moral values are the result of thousands of years of human evolution, and evolved in a way that makes them fit for a good compromise between individual survival, familly/lineage survival, society/civilization/ethnic group survival and specy survival. It's not optimised, but it's working okay.

Moral values (and Weltanschauung) of an individual develop vastly related to the most common ones of the social group he's raised into. Later experiences in life (for exemple travels, religious conversion, "unfair" ordeals, etc) may modify it. Genetics and embryogenesis also have an influence, but I can't really talk about it. The more the morals of an individual match those of the group, and provided he acts and speaks on it, the more likely it is he will be well integrated ("all else being equal" ). An individual whose morals are very different from those of the group is more likely to feel and be rejected, but also to leave this group, unless he's got talent to hide his misbehaviour and has an interest/desire to exploit/manipulate the group from a leading position.

To act or speak, an individual refers to his personnal morals. They often are more or less conform to the common ones of the group. Most people fit relatively well in the society they live into, and they are generally okay with what is asked from them and what they are forbidden to do or say. But as I wrote, moral values have a practical purpose. If one personnal interest goes against even his own values, he might decide to do what's more interesting and not what's more moral. For exemple if he's told to shoot a stranger or he'll get shot. Just take a look at Milgram experiment, even according to the most critical authors, about half the subjects went to inflict a deadly discharge to a perfect stranger though no physical coercition was ever used. If they had people around, judging them, and representing the moral norm, it would have dropped dramatically, just as conformity drops when, in Asch experiment, the subject is given a "partner" or allowed to only write his answer without making it public (making something public exposes you to judgement).
Bourdieu did an important work on "values" in society. You should read about it.

But if you can find a paper proving that moral values are independant of social context and behaviours of the judgment of others, please do so. I wish you good luck. As philosophical (and religious) theory, it could stand, but the rise of social science outdated it like the rise of "evolutionism" outdated the theory that humans were created as humans by God from nothing, about 6000 years ago.

By the way here is part of a funny text I've found on a creationnist website while I was searching for the age of Universe according to the Bible:

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People who believe in the big bang generally interpret the evidence according to the big bang (sometimes without even realizing it). In other words, they simply assume that the big bang is true and they interpret the evidence to match their beliefs. We all interpret the evidence in light of our worldview; there is no getting around it.
Since the Bible records the true history of the universe, we will see that it makes a lot more sense of the evidence than the big bang does.
Of course, big-bang supporters can always reinterpret the evidence by adding on extra assumptions, so, these facts that follow are not intended to “prove” that the Bible is right about the age of the universe. The Bible is right in all matters because it is the Word of God. However, when we understand the scientific evidence, we will find that it agrees with what the Bible teaches.

You see: according to them, big-bang believers assume the big-bang theory is true, while Bible believers know the Bible theory is true. It's inconcievable it's the other way around or any other way (both assuming, or both knowing). Big-bang believers interprets evidences according to the big-bang theory (pejorative, because it's a false theory), while them Bible believers interprets evidences according to the Bible theory (which is a good thing, because the Bible theory is not just a theory, it's the true truth).
You're exactly in the same position when you call ignorants people for which what makes truth true is different.
Personnaly I disagree with them, but I understand that the way they see things is different, and what is almost self-evident to me is questionnable for them, and vice-versa: we legitimate our own world views with different arguments; same with you. I'd just like you to admit it.

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Madnumforce

A Jew doesn't care, as in Judaism there is no such thing as the Covenant of Christ.

They reject Christianity and the rational ones will make arguments for that thus by definition the groups care. In fact the question I posed is one of the strongest arguments that atheists make against Christianity (with similar arguments against Islam and other Covenant based religions) hence rational atheists who have carefully considering the opposing views (i.e. the ones that can actually make a claim to know) care very much about that question specifically.

Now of course there are lots of people who have a position without justification and don't care about it because they have that position by some kind of basic default. However it is pretty meaningless to walk into a conversation where two people are discussing what aspect of heredity is controlling trait frequency in a population and saying "I don't care about this at all!". Ok, then let the people that do care and who want to have rational conversations about it do so and just continue not caring and being ignorant of it.

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Can you conceive different people have different Weltanschauungen, and it doesn't make them inferior?

I have noted several times the various world views on many subjects, obviously I am aware they exist. As for what it makes someone who holds a viewpoint, it doesn't in general make them anything as you can not accurately classify an entire group of people so trivially. If someone holds a position which is not rational then they are irrational in that case. If they are ignorant of information it makes them ignorant in that case. It does not in general mean they would be described as being irrational or ignorant.

In general people who are irrational make irrational arguments as part of the common behavior, in general people who are ignorant give statements without justification as part of their common behavior. Rational people often hold irrational views just like honest people do sometimes tell lies. Again, the classification would be on the preponderance of behavior. What does it mean or make someone to be a Christian, well it makes them someone who accepts Jesus as their savior, you can't really tell anything else from that one position.

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I did not use the term "people in close proximity", only you did.

You specifically noted "It's not a question of quantity, but rather of mean concentration." .

So again, is all that is required for you to accept an action as being moral is that it that the mean concentration of belief is high enough regardless of the nature of the action or its consequences?

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But if you can find a paper proving that moral values are independant of social context and behaviours of the judgment of others, please do so.

There are many of these, I quoted one of the current most popular (as he is outspoken and has had semi-famous debates) in the above. Kagan has not only developed an objective platform but has published on how it can be interpreted/utilized, the actual math that has to be done in a moral framework. This includes things such as if an action has moral attributes then changes to said action have to have moral consequences. This sounds kind of obvious, but really isn't, it is fundamental to developing not only the set of what is moral vs what is not, but also the magnitude of a moral decision and the polarity of it.

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You see: according to them, big-bang believers assume the big-bang theory is true, while Bible believers know the Bible theory is true.

Yes you can cite lots of irrational people who supportion Creation, you can find irrational people who support anything. People in general are irrational and no matter what group you look at you can find irrational ones.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2014 12:47PM by CliffStamp.

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CliffStamp


You specifically noted "It's not a question of quantity, but rather of mean concentration." .

So again, is all that is required for you to accept an action as being moral is that it that the mean concentration of belief is high enough regardless of the nature of the action or its consequences?

--

As a point of clarification, this isn't the place to soapbox, all perspectives are welcomed, however if they are not going to be justified then this isn't the place for it. If questions are not going to be answered, and this one as asked multiple times - then the soapboxing needs to go elsewhere.

--

In general, this is the question which hits at the heart of subjective morality. If a thing isn't right/wrong on a fundamental level but there are still oughts, then ought reduces to what is popular. Craig made this point to Harris who had no answer and had to admit that if the population shifted so enough people felt that (insert any action here) was moral then it became moral under his argument.

Now Harris was in an odd position because he had started off by attacking Islam and Religion by saying there were things they did which were "obviously" wrong, but it was shown that all he was doing was saying the majority of people feel that minority group ought not to have the freedom/rights they think they should have because we, the majority, decide otherwise. Just consider what that argument actually entails.

This is the true problem with majority decides view of morality and if you think back in history there were many times that major swings in our development could only take place when this was rejected. In fact at times things started with just one person taking a stand that it didn't matter how many people or how long or how culturally accepted a thing was, it was simply wrong on a fundamental level and had to change.

The curious question then becomes how do you enable such a viewpoint, what allows a fundamental right/wrong (ontological) and then the more interesting/practical question how to you know a fundamental right/wrong (epistemological).

--

Now curiously enough, some zombie movies have addressed this with zombies being not so trivially killed as the fact they have some kind of right is explored. How much is different in the various movies, some of them have them eventually being looked at as being equal with people. Now it is rarely explored as to why they should have rights, but in almost all cases it is because they show some sign of empathy and/or intelligence.

A zombie gives his opinion of this katana :

[www.youtube.com]

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CliffStamp
As a point of clarification, this isn't the place to soapbox, all perspectives are welcomed, however if they are not going to be justified then this isn't the place for it. If questions are not going to be answered, and this one as asked multiple times - then the soapboxing needs to go elsewhere.

I am willing to answer, but these last days have been tiring and I currently have many things on my mind keeping me busy and... not so well. This debate is quite interesting (though seriously out of topic -nice try to bring it back to zombies by the way), but it requires lot of attention and thinking I just can't seem to achieve for the moment.

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Madnumforce
I am willing to answer, but these last days have been tiring and I currently have many things on my mind keeping me busy and... not so well.

Madnumforce, the question was asked five times and ignored it while you continued to adamantly advocate a particular subjective framework on morality. This also isn't the first time you jumped into a debate on this topic, made these kinds of absolute and very strong statements about morality and then when asked questions about the consequences of such a framework refused to address them. Now there is no requirement to participate in any particular discussion, but as has been noted before this isn't the place to soapbox.

Imagine someone coming into a discussion about 1095 vs 440C in a fillet knife where the many positive issues of 1095 were raised but the issues of rusting was a contention and then they make a post noting the discussion was moot because 1095 was more stainless than 440C anyway. He is asked "Are you saying if you put 1095 and 440C in a salt water solution that the 440C would rust quicker and more extensive than 1095?" . If they can't answer that question and/or ignore it then how/why are they making that first statement?

... is all that is required for you to accept an action as being moral is that it that the mean concentration of belief is high enough regardless of the nature of the action or its consequences?

The reason this question is problematic is because it is of the form of the Euthyphro dilemma which has two "horns". If you answer no then you have contradicted your subjective framework. However if you answer yes, well then then consequences of that are rather obvious, hence why almost no one will answer yes because it reduces morality to nothing more than popularity through chance and the obvious followup question(s) are really telling as they are of the form - "So you are saying you would actually do (insert some action here) simply because (some subjective condition is met)?" ... and argue not only would you do it but that you ought to have done it.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/08/2014 05:22PM by CliffStamp.

Now just to clarify, there is also a very similar question which can be posed to a theist who claims God is the standard of morality and it goes like :

"If you woke up tomorrow and God had revealed to you that (insert some action here) had to be performed, would you accept it as moral regardless of the nature of that action or the consequences?"

If the answer to that is no then God can not be the source of morality, so you can't answer no. However if you answer yes then quite frankly your position is very difficult because we actually lock people up for being mentally dangerous if they open admit they would do (insert some extreme action here) simply because God told them to do it.

If both yes/no horns can not be used then how do you answer this question? Many theists will refuse to answer it as they consider it degrading/insulting, but it is a perfectly valid question because it hits at the heart of the epistemological problem (how to you know what to do) even if the ontological problem (what is the source of morality) is known (God).

These are the source of the very difficult questions about morality which ironically enough though something we use/employ every day is something few people give much thought to. Now it can be answered of course, a theist will argue the answer on the basis of modern divine command theory.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/08/2014 05:35PM by CliffStamp.

I do whatever my Rice Krispies tell me to do.

Nonsense, porridge is the only true cereal!

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bubo
I do whatever my Rice Krispies tell me to do.

Interestingly enough, most people never progress beyond the morality they learned as kids, in the same way they retain long standing choices in breakfast cereals. When you are young the brain has an extremely powerful ability to develop complex algorithms. For example did you ever see anyone define chair to a kid, or did they just tell them chair and point to something and the kid will deduce from that what a chair is at some essential level. Morality for most people is developed in the same way. They are told a number of things are right/wrong and from that point on they react with whatever algorithm they figured out fit that pattern when they were young with no more difference than they judge if something is or isn't a chair. The more we study the early development of the brain the more we learn how much of an extreme influence it has on our later life.

Ah porridge, my favorite quote about porridge comes from a Conan novel when he remarks that the reason why Cimmerian warriors likely fight so ferociously is that the oat porridge makes them lose all fear of death.

That chair thing is funny. I have always explained things to my kid in way more detail than I need to or more than she can comprehend anyways.

www.theflatearthsociety.org

BIGFOOT FINDS YOU, YOU DON'T FIND BIGFOOT!



IT IS THE E-NEP THROWING BROTHERHOOD

My favourite quote about porridge, or rather oats, comes from Dr Johnsons first dictionary:

Oats - A grain which, in England is fed to horses but in Scotland sustains the population.
To which his Scottish biographer retorted "Aye and that's why in England you breed fine horses while Scotland breeds fine men!

Kephart said about oats(more or less) : Only the Scots have learned to subsist on this grain and it has taken many millenia and countless gallons of whisky for them to do so.

My two pence on the morality discussion.

The question :

... is all that is required for you to accept an action as being moral is that it that the mean concentration of belief is high enough regardless of the nature of the action or its consequences?

I would answer no. I am content to work within the dictates of my own conscience. I will not pretend though that I am not influenced by the people and wider society around me.

However if the question was:

.....what is required for an action to be considered moral, regardless of the action or it's consequences?


Then I would answer that it would simply have to fall within the moral norms of a given society. For example, in Lacadaemonia (Spartan Greece) it was considered right and proper for older men to be intimate with young boys, to leave disabled children outside to die of exposure and to enslave the entire population of the country next door because Spartans were not allowed to do any work beyond soldiering. (source Dr Bettany Hughes from a documentary called 'Meet the Spartans' I think). Whilst none of these actions could be thought even slightly morally appropriate in a modern western society they were considered not only right and proper but there was severe censure for those who did not live up to them. Incidently, the same documentary mentioned that a consequence of boys never associating intimacy or sex with girls was that the birth rate dropped drastically. Young Spartan men literally did not know what to do with a women. To counter this and ensure a good supply of soldiers the wedding ceremony was changed. On the wedding night the bride would dress as a boy and the groom would chase her around the bed chamber until he caught her and wrestled her to the ground!

Broadly speaking the same question is what has led to all the variations and adjustments to the concept of moral utilitarianism. This states that an action is right where it brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people, irrespective of what that action is or any suffering it may cause to a minority.

The theists question:

If you woke up tomorrow and God had revealed to you that (insert some action here) had to be performed, would you accept it as moral regardless of the nature of that action or the consequences?

Would only be an issue if the theist was also religeously observant. A theist simply believes in God or Gods they do not automatically follow their dictates. If they were religeously observant, especially if they were Christian or Jewish then they may have a problem. As I understand it they would be obligated to follow the example of Abraham and sacrifice their first born or whatever else was required in order to remain in good standing with their faith. As someone who is ,at least nominally, a Muslim I would have a different issue. If I wish to be properly observant then I must submit entirely to the will of God. This is a fundamental tenet of the religeon and the meaning of the word Islam. However, if God is revealing his (Its) will to me directly then I must be a Prophet and another, even more fundamental tenet of the religeon is that Muhammad, peace be upon him, is God's final Prophet and any who come after must be false. So either I would be mentally ill or a false prophet of Satan.

To sum up. It is my belief that morality is subjective not absolute. What is considered moral will vary not only between societies but between individuals within those societies and by the circumstances they find themselves in. To put it another way . I have just used an awful lot of words to say "It depends..."

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bubo
I do whatever my Rice Krispies tell me to do.

Lol. Nice one!

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CliffStamp
Now just to clarify, there is also a very similar question which can be posed to a theist who claims God is the standard of morality and it goes like :

"If you woke up tomorrow and God had revealed to you that (insert some action here) had to be performed, would you accept it as moral regardless of the nature of that action or the consequences?"

If the answer to that is no then God can not be the source of morality, so you can't answer no. However if you answer yes then quite frankly your position is very difficult because we actually lock people up for being mentally dangerous if they open admit they would do (insert some extreme action here) simply because God told them to do it.

If both yes/no horns can not be used then how do you answer this question? Many theists will refuse to answer it as they consider it degrading/insulting, but it is a perfectly valid question because it hits at the heart of the epistemological problem (how to you know what to do) even if the ontological problem (what is the source of morality) is known (God).

These are the source of the very difficult questions about morality which ironically enough though something we use/employ every day is something few people give much thought to. Now it can be answered of course, a theist will argue the answer on the basis of modern divine command theory.

My answer is: and how on Earth could you be sure that it was God talking to you? What if it's the result of a particularly good acid trip you don't even remember?
You want me to take for granted that there always is something ontologically true/real we can know/discover. I just don't.

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... is all that is required for you to accept an action as being moral is that it that the mean concentration of belief is high enough regardless of the nature of the action or its consequences?

You still asking this question, and don't understant that my answer won't ever be yes or no, because your underlying Weltanschauung is not mine, and it forces me to develop long and dull explanations you just can't seem to understand.

Everybody experience morality, yet everybody experience it differently. One person, facing the same situation/behaviour/speech might have a "moral-based" reaction different depending on his mood, personnal experience (traumas and such), etc... Amongst a group of people, moral views always differe in some way (but they often share some common viewpoints).

You view morals as something you ought to do or not to do... OR ELSE WHAT??? Jove will strike you on the head with his ligthning spear? If you believe in the afterlife, in God (or Osiris, or the Valkyries, or whatever) and his judgement etc... then of course it has consequences. Yet the immediate consequence is of social nature. Do something immoral/taboo/haram/tareff, and there are chances you will be criticized, rejected, convicted, banned, killed, or tortured (depending on how strongly wrong is your action considered, and what society you live in). Do the things people think are right, and you're likely to get respect, and more people on your side if you're accused of something.

Quite often, morals are also a tool of social domination. Just read about symbolic power (or symbolic violence).

Every individual judges situation/behaviours/speechs according to his own personnal moral frame. This moral frame is built amongst a social environnement that deeply influences it. Though all personnal moral frames are different, it's relevant to say that there almost always are average/common tendencies. Theyre are, however, pertaining to relevant social groups. The further one's behaviours and speeches are from what is considered right amongst his socials groups and neighbooring ones, the more likely it will be deemed immoral/wrong, and he will get rejected. If one can't face that reject, he'd better stay on the path the majority has drawn as being moral, or at least not too immoral/wrong.

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HedgeChopper

...

Thus society can consider an action moral, and you (anyone else) can consider the action immoral thus the determination of society is not binding on you (or anyone else).

Thus for any individual in that society as long as they have some internal justification which only has to make sense to them, for (insert any action here) it is indeed moral to them and you would then argue that they then ought to do it?

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Would only be an issue if the theist was also religeously observant. A theist simply believes in God or Gods they do not automatically follow their dictates.

I noted "...a theist who claims God is the standard of morality" not simply a theist.

Note I was not asking if they would act that way, simply if they would accept it was moral. Now they could accept that it was moral and refuse to do it, a person can decide to be immoral .



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/08/2014 08:26PM by CliffStamp.

Second point first:

"...a theist who claims God is the standard of morality"

Would indeed be bound to accept anything dictated by God as being moral. I think I may have misread or skipped some of what you wrote earlier. This can become very bound up with a persons identity. I once asked my ,fairly devout, father how we knew that God had our best interests at heart and was telling us the best way to live. He looked at me cross eyed for a moment then said, "Don't be stupid." and walked off.

Back to the first point.

Thus society can consider an action moral, and you (anyone else) can consider the action immoral thus the determination of society is not binding on you (or anyone else).

If we leave out the impact of laws and imposed consequences for actions then this is correct.


Thus for any individual in that society as long as they have some internal justification which only has to make sense to them, for (insert any action here) it is indeed moral to them and you would then argue that they then ought to do it?[/i]

This is more complicated. I might not argue that they should do it. It would depend on the action and how it fit with my own moral compass. However, as a general point, people should attempt to act as they believe is right, even where this does not fit with the social mores and wider moral obligations/restrictions of their own society. They may not be able to do this for fear of sanction or censure or simply lacking the physical or psychological strength to do so. This will almost inevitably result in conflict within a society but I would argue that there is a neccessity for that conflict and individuals with the courage (self regard?) to ignore what is and has been, considered moral and appropriate. This is a scary idea because for every Gandhi, there will be a Manson; for every civil rights campaigner there will be a predatory paedophile. I say neccessary though because without a challenge to societal morals they will not change. Without change we would still be imprisoning (or executing) homosexuals, women would not be entitled to the same rate of pay as men and most democracies would impose a minimum income requirement for voting entitlement.