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HedgeChopper

Would indeed be bound to accept anything dictated by God as being moral.

Yes, and thus the next question will follow to drive home the problem "So you are saying that if God told you to (insert any action here) you would do it?" . A lot of theists will attempt a couple of different ways to address that :

a) it is insulting/degrading and refuse to answer it

b) God can not do that

(now of course you can refuse to do what God says and just act immorally but that is the trivial case)

The second answer seems reasonable but fails instantly because how do you know God would not do that? Just think about the starting premise of the entire argument.

If you start out from the point of view that God defines morality how can you then decide if a particular action from God is immoral without violating the starting point.

There are ways to resolve the question, but it isn't so trivial and it tends to give most theists problems which is why most atheists will challenge theistic morality with that question almost immediately.

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...I might not argue that they should do it. It would depend on the action and how it fit with my own moral compass.

But this violates your starting point. How can it be moral to them but they ought not to do it when moral is what one ought to do?

To add another layer of complexity if you had the ability to make them act as you decide is moral then it is moral for you to make them comply?

This is another two-pronged question because both answers seem to violate the starting point of the argument and both answers lead to consequences that few people will advocate they actually would do.

If it is not moral for you to make them comply then you are now saying that your moral actions can produce consequences which are immoral. This doesn't seem to make morality have any meaning at all.

If it is moral for you to make them comply then it is also moral for them to make you comply. If this is true then you have a position where again morality doesn't seem to have any meaning at all because the starting point leads to two completely opposite and contradictory results.

--

This is why these kinds of discussions will open typically with some extreme action and the relativist has to reject the claim that it ought never to be done. You can not argue that it ought not to be done because of its nature of consequences because that is an objective position. It is easy to see that you can make a claim so extreme that defending it is pretty difficult to do in public, but again if you advocate a relative morality that is what you are stating.

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CliffStamp
Yes, and thus the next question will follow to drive home the problem "So you are saying that if God told you to (insert any action here) you would do it?" . A lot of theists will attempt a couple of different ways to address that :
(...)
b) God can not do that
(...)
The second answer seems reasonable but fails instantly because how do you know God would not do that? Just think about the starting premise of the entire argument.

If you start out from the point of view that God defines morality how can you then decide if a particular action from God is immoral without violating the starting point.

For the sake of the argument you could defend that regarding scriptures.
One of the points that differ the reign of law from absolutism is that Governement cannot do whatever it wants and has to abide to various scriptures. Government may eventually change the law but most Constitutions forbid to create retroactive laws (you can change law to make something legal illegal, but you can't charge someone for something illegal if it was legal at the time they did it).

So as a (potential) theist (whatever the brand) that God has left us scriptures (or rites, or tales, or whatever rites your religion use) that define what God is supposed to do. And those commands seem moral to you right now therefore if God came to earth he would have to act moral.

Now what if God comes to earth and starts acting like a jerk. You could argue he is not God since he doesn't act like the scriptures say (hence why any somewhat "sophisticated" religion is very "serious" about theb subject of scriptures).

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Madnumforce

...

As noted to you previously multiple times, this isn't the place to soapbox.

If you want to make strong statements about morality then you can't refuse to answer the consequential questions. There are lots of forums where you can do that, there are lots of places which encourage it - again, please go there.

I have asked you multiple times, please respect my request and take your soapboxing to a place where that kind of discussion is welcomed. It isn't what this forum was created for.

--

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Madnumforce
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?

Objective morality through theism isn't argued on consequences, an act is moral because it aligns with the nature of God. One doesn't avoid immoral acts for fear of punishment, one does moral acts because they are what one ought to do, it isn't a request to be rewarded.

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This is actually one of the reasons why atheists argue against theistic based morality as they argue it removes free will / choice / rationalism as all you do is passively align with God's will, but theists argue it doesn't do that at all.

One of the clearest presentations of this is in the Gita where Arjuna visits Krishna (God) and asks him what to do as he can not figure out what is moral because he is stricken between doing what he sees as being obviously the right choice but it leads him in direct conflict with his friends, family members and those he loves the most dear so how can it be the right choice if they all oppose him?

This is not a work which can be so trivially represented in a few lines, but the essence of it (horribly condensed) is that Arjuna can find the right answer through divine enlightenment with necessary reflection, he should not simply ask what to be done and act like a mindless robot. He has to use his rationality, his wisdom and his empathy to figure this out. The whole thing is basically a view on dharma which is similar to morality but much more encompassing as it also includes things which are amoral (not immoral).

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bubo

...
You could argue he is not God since he doesn't act like the scriptures ...

You can't use this argument because God is an omni-max being in those views, if you don't know it is God then it isn't God. The argument starts off with "If God said ..." not if "If some being which might be God said ..." .

Now there is another question which is critical which is how do you know it is God? But note that this is an epistemological problem (how to know) not an ontological one (what something is) so it shifts the question completely.

This is also a critical question though and it is related but it isn't the same. It is similar to asking :

-does gravity exists

vs

-what is the nature of gravity

These are related but they are not the same and you can know the first one and not the second.

Theists claim to know the first one, none of them claim to know the second, in fact they openly admit it is something they spend considerable time trying to figure out. Even the strongest and most vocal apologists openly state there are many sources of disagreement among themselves in how to interpret the message of God and they rationalize this on the basis that they are not perfect beings - hence the conflicts.

This is the same way that everyone studying the nature of gravity will openly admit there are many ways to view it but this doesn't mean gravity isn't real and is subject to different subjective opinions/whims. It exists as something we just don't have an integrated picture of it yet which corresponds to how we understand other fundamental forces.

As an even simpler case, I don't know your birth name, this isn't an argument that you don't have one. Me being ignorant of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2014 02:21PM by CliffStamp.

The scripture question is also quite interesting and it is usually asked in the form of "If two new pages were found tomorrow which were claimed to be lost pages of the X, how could you decide if they were or not?" .

Now if this isn't a religious document then the methods are well known and they are used every day in historical research, but you can't so trivially apply them to religious documents because those are the documents which tell you how things are.

For example I produce a page and it describes Jesus giving a sermon to some disciple can you reject this because your understanding of it is that it is something that Jesus would not say. No. You can not because if you do then you are claiming to know the mind of God.

The fact we can not do this is critical to the modal defense of the problem of Evil. Thus as a theist you have to be very careful about making such claims because if you do you will get obliterated by very trivial atheist arguments.

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CliffStamp
You can't use this argument because God is an omni-max being in those views, if you don't know it is God then it isn't God. The argument starts off with "If God said ..." not if "If some being which might be God said ..." .

Thing is since no one has seen God, people can actually believe only in the scripture. So if God appears, makes it unchallengeable he is God, and he doesn't behave like in the scriptures... Well, he isn't what the people believed into so the theists are mostly proved wrong. Also if God can prove he is God by some transcendental way , all beliefs are moot.

To put it in a funny way:
Suppose the revelation happens and God appears to be Cthulhu and there is no other God.

Should Christians revere Cthulhu because there is no other omnipotent God except Cthulhu and since they were revering the omnipotent being they were actually revering Cthulhu all along except the scriptures weren't accurate.

...or should they just realize that they were wrong all along (because Cthulhu has somehow proven there is no other God except himself) but this doesn't mean they logically have to revere Cthulhu instead.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2014 03:40PM by bubo.

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bubo
Thing is since no one has seen God, people can actually believe only in the scripture.

Scripture isn't why Theists believe in an omni-max God in general. Scripture is just a form of communicating revelation to the masses, but isn't isn't proof directly. I could write a scripture now, no one would take that as justification of anything.

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So if God appears, makes it unchallengeable he is God, and he doesn't behave like in the scriptures... Well, he isn't what the people believed into so the theists are mostly proved wrong.

This isn't how a theist (of the Christian type) views scripture. See for example the modal view of the rejection of the problem of evil, it is not possible to know the mind of God or from viewing the actions of God know if said action was good or evil.

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Also if God can prove he is God by some transcendental way , all beliefs are moot.

This is like saying "If a Duck is not an animal then .... " . A duck has to be an animal, that sentence makes no sense. A theist who has God as the standard of morality has God as an omni-max being, such a being can't not be known otherwise than as God once revealed. If it wasn't known as God then it wasn't an omni-max being.

This is why the question is ask "If God ..." not if "Some being which may or may not be God said ..." .



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2014 03:53PM by CliffStamp.

To clarify, there are some Theists who hold scripture as proof of God, Islam is one such religion. The claim there is that the book itself is a direct sign of divinity as it is impossible that it could be written by people because of the nature of the language used. This argument is difficult to discuss because many people take the Koran as the reference for the Arabic language. There are other religions which make similar claims usually of the form that some scripture needs some kind of divine intervention to be read so it is proof of divinity - Joseph Smith for example and the "seer stones" which allowed him to translate the golden tablets into the book of mormon.

However in general most theists will claim to know God independent of the scriptures and they are just a message from God and will prove God's existence through other means such as the arguments noted previously.

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CliffStamp
A theist who has God as the standard of morality has God as an omni-max being, such a being can't not be known otherwise than as God once revealed. If it wasn't known as God then it wasn't an omni-max being.

This is why the question is ask "If God ..." not if "Some being which may or may not be God said ..." .

A theist can only have his image of God as a standard of morality. So if God appears, is omni-max, but is nothing like the theist excepted, is the contract still valid.
Is the theist basically saying, I'll revere any omni-max being whatever it is, or is it I'm revering that omni-max being from church?

The mystic theists who claim to know God independent of the scriptures are even an easier claim. There's nothing left to prove because they have everything figured out already. It's like scriptures power 10. Conversly if God doesn't behave like they expected their faith should be even more deeply affected.

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bubo

So if God appears, is omni-max, but is nothing like the theist excepted, is the contract still valid.

If a theist who has an omni-max God makes the statement "I reject that thing which says it is God because of its actions ..." then they have violated the defense of the argument of evil and which then concludes it is impossible that an omni-max God can exist.

If you want to understand why this can't be made then you need to read the modal defense of the logical problem of evil, it hinges on the fact that an individual can not know the mind of God or from seeing the actions of God know if they are moral or immoral.

If you advocate that you can know the mind of God and know from seeing the actions of God determine if it was immoral or not then the logical argument of evil shows that omni-max God can not exist.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2014 04:30PM by CliffStamp.

Ok this one may be a bit jumbled. Can somone let me know how to do the neatly boxed multiple quotes thing please? I can't find it as an option. Also how do you edit your posts, I keep seeing horrendous spelling mistakes and wrong words used in mine!

Cliff,

Yes, and thus the next question will follow to drive home the problem "So you are saying that if God told you to (insert any action here) you would do it?" . A lot of theists will attempt a couple of different ways to address that :

a) it is insulting/degrading and refuse to answer it

b) God can not do that

If you start out from the point of view that God defines morality how can you then decide if a particular action from God is immoral without violating the starting point.

My previous post on God as the source of morality addresses this from the point of view of the Abrahamic religeons. It does not apply to many of the multi-deity religeons as Gods would do things like that all the time just to amuse themselves. Obedience to the will of Gods there was more to do with avoiding having them mess with you.

An interesting aspect is what happens to God in this instance. If God were to announce some new , previously considered despicable, action as a moral necessity it will almost certainly involve contradicting a previous injunction. I can't help but wonder whether an 'Omnimax' being contradicting themselves wouldn't result in a Babelfish like logic implosion!



Me

...I might not argue that they should do it. It would depend on the action and how it fit with my own moral compass.

Cliff:

But this violates your starting point. How can it be moral to them but they ought not to do it when moral is what one ought to do?

Put simply, because it might not be moral to me. Having stated that we all ought to perform whatever action we feel is moral I must therefore take a stand against what I see as immoral. That means that I can only argue that somone should perform a specific action if I have no moral objection to it. To do otherwise would indeed violate my starting point.

I have already argued that everyone should attempt to follow their own morality. I also stated that this would lead to inevitable ,but necessary, conflict between individuals and groups with competing morals.

Another way of looking at this which may illuminate what I am getting at. I see no contradiction in first fighting for someone's right to say something and then fighting them because they said it.


Cliff:

To add another layer of complexity if you had the ability to make them act as you decide is moral then it is moral for you to make them comply?

Absolutely. Also you get an army of morally compliant zombie, robot people to play with!

If it is moral for you to make them comply then it is also moral for them to make you comply. If this is true then you have a position where again morality doesn't seem to have any meaning at all because the starting point leads to two completely opposite and contradictory results.

These are not completely opposite and contradictory. It leads back to my moral competition argument. We could be developing a new theory here. Morality and natural selection!

This is why these kinds of discussions will open typically with some extreme action and the relativist has to reject the claim that it ought never to be done. You can not argue that it ought not to be done because of its nature of consequences because that is an objective position. It is easy to see that you can make a claim so extreme that defending it is pretty difficult to do in public, but again if you advocate a relative morality that is what you are stating.

The thing is no matter how extreme the action it is almost always possible to find real examples of the action being considered morally appropriate on a societal scale. Also it is not objective to argue for or against any action based on its consequences. Morality as a guide to action is inherently subjective. Here is a question for you:-

Can you form a truly objective argument, based on consequences, that murder is wrong?

Cliff:

The scripture question is also quite interesting and it is usually asked in the form of "If two new pages were found tomorrow which were claimed to be lost pages of the X, how could you decide if they were or not?" .

Now if this isn't a religious document then the methods are well known and they are used every day in historical research, but you can't so trivially apply them to religious documents because those are the documents which tell you how things are.

For example I produce a page and it describes Jesus giving a sermon to some disciple can you reject this because your understanding of it is that it is something that Jesus would not say. No. You can not because if you do then you are claiming to know the mind of God.

This really depends on the specifics of the religeon followed by the theist. My knowledge is limited in this area but as I understand it a Christian would reject the new pages out of hand because the Bible has been declared complete and inviolable by the Pope (who speaks for God on earth) several centuries ago. This is why nothing from the Dead Sea scrolls has been added. A Muslim could simply refer the document to the group of scholars in Mecca who's job it is to use historical research to verify how much of the Koran and the Hadiths is accurate and represents the true teachings of Mohammed, peace be upon him. Aparrently they have shown around 80% of the Hadiths to be made up but almost the entirety of the Koran to be accurate, in so far as it represents the teachings of Mohammed. Interestingly western historians have come to broadly the same conclusion(source Tom Holland - In the Shadow of the Sword - a really good book aout the history of religeon). I don't know what a Jew would do but a Buddist wouldn't care. I wish I could remember which Buddist teacher I am quoting but "The holy scriptures are nothing. Use them as papers to wipe the pus from your boils!"

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HedgeChopper
Ok this one may be a bit jumbled. Can somone let me know how to do the neatly boxed multiple quotes thing please?

You just hit quote and then in the editing separate out parts with


[q u o t e]

some text here

[/q u o t e]


Just remove the spaces in the q u o t e part. I had to put them in as if I didn't they quote activate and you would just see this :

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some text here

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Also how do you edit your posts, I keep seeing horrendous spelling mistakes and wrong words used in mine!

You hit edit, it expires after a certain time period. If you need to change something you just PM a mod/admin to change it.

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I can't help but wonder whether an 'Omnimax' being contradicting themselves wouldn't result in a Babelfish like logic implosion!

That is like saying what would happen to someone who speaks only English spoke French, well nothing really except that it wasn't an only English speaking person.

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I also stated that this would lead to inevitable ,but necessary, conflict between individuals and groups with competing morals.

It isn't the conflict that is the issue. There is conflict in objective morality because people can fail to know what is the moral action. The issue in relative morality isn't that there is a conflict, it is that there is no resolution aside from :

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Morality and natural selection!

And thus what is moral is simply that which is advocated by the group with the most power. There are people who actually will defend power = morality, and there are even people who live like that in public, i.e., it was right because I was able to do it. That is a perfectly consistent view of course as long as you are willing to accept the consequences when you are not the majority view. If you are not then it collapses as inconsistent.

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Can you form a truly objective argument, based on consequences, that murder is wrong?

Murder is defined so as to be wrongful killing.

If you mean can you make an objective argument to why killing someone simply for the purpose of your personal entertainment is wrong, then yes there are systems which do that, Kagan's for example.

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My knowledge is limited in this area but as I understand it a Christian would reject the new pages out of hand because the Bible has been declared complete and inviolable by the Pope (who speaks for God on earth) several centuries ago. This is why nothing from the Dead Sea scrolls has been added.

The Pope isn't held to be inerrant by Christianity in general. Papal infallibility only holds to certain issues, and not all of Christianity even accepts the Pope as the head of the Church (only Catholics have to). There are also many different versions of the Bible and they are often different in key passages which lead to strong topics of contention.

I have meant to look at Islam because they way they make that argument as you described (what is an accurate representation of the teachings) leaves them open to the argument from Evil. I just need to find a Muslim scholar who will have a discussion not in Arabic with an Infidel about how can they know what is the real scripture -and- defend the argument from Evil.

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CliffStamp
To clarify, there are some Theists who hold scripture as proof of God, Islam is one such religion. The claim there is that the book itself is a direct sign of divinity as it is impossible that it could be written by people because of the nature of the language used. This argument is difficult to discuss because many people take the Koran as the reference for the Arabic language.

To expand on this, the idea is that God demonstrates his power and divinity by showing superior abilities in whatever area his audience takes the most pride. Thus Jews were renowned as physicians so God's prophet showed that he could raise the dead. In the same way Arabs, who were a mixture of Jews,Christians and Pagans, prided themselves on being great story tellers and poets. The Arabic language is believed to have been invented on purpose (which I think may make it unique amongst living languages) as a formalisation of the polyglot used by traveling story tellers who needed to be understood in many different regions (source Albert Hourani - A history of the Arab Peoples). The Koran is said to use language too beautiful for a human to have written it and it has in fact become a recognised challenge amongst Arabic poets too try and equal it. It is also considered that in order to properly understand the Koran one must be fluent in Arabic or it's nuances and beauty are lost. This is also the reason why it is only relatively recently that translations of the Koran have become available. It is considered a grave sin to reinterpret or change it in any way which left native translators unwilling to take the risk.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2014 06:09PM by HedgeChopper.

Hinduism takes a similar view, my partner for example simply notes that God appears to people in the way that is necessary for them to note they exist. They are a Hindu, but they don't reject other religions, they are just how other people interpret God's message. It is no different than how people make different arguments for a theory of gravity.

You just hit quote and then in the editing separate out parts with

Clearly I am still doing somthing Wrong

Non fractal nightmare version of post:

That is like saying what would happen to someone who speaks only English spoke French, well nothing really except that it wasn't an only English speaking person.

Except it isn't. A person who is known only to speak one language is unlikely also to be known as infallible.

It isn't the conflict that is the issue. There is conflict in objective morality because people can fail to know what is the moral action. The issue in relative morality isn't that there is a conflict, it is that there is no resolution...]

How can there ever be moral resolution? If we leave aside the idea of an external arbitor of morality then it necessarily must be changing and somewhat fluid. That is why I reject moral objectivity and state that the very concept of morality is a subjective one.

And thus what is moral is simply that which is advocated by the group with the most power.

This is an accurate representation of how a societies morality can come about. I have though already argued that morality varies by individual who may well be at odds with their society and perhaps win sufficient support to alter its moral compass. The Civil Rights movement in the US is a good example of this. They challenged the morality of the establishment (those with power), accepted the, often horrific, consequences of doing so and managed to change societal morals.

Murder is defined so as to be wrongful killing.

No. Murder is defined as unlawful killing. Judicial excecution of an individual later discovered to be innocent is is wrongful but it is not defined as murder. It could be argued, and often is, that all forms of state sanctioned killing are wrongful.

If you mean can you make an objective argument to why killing someone simply for the purpose of your personal entertainment is wrong, then yes there are systems which do that, Kagan's for example

I am not familiar with Kagan but my question does not require that the person doing the killing enjoy the experience. They could be killing for money, revenge,prejudice or to eliminate a witness to a crime the motivation is not relevant.

Can you construct an objective, moral argument that it is wrong to kill someone unlawfully?

I have meant to look at Islam because they way they make that argument as you described (what is an accurate representation of the teachings) leaves them open to the argument from Evil. I just need to find a Muslim scholar who will have a discussion not in Arabic with an Infidel about how can they know what is the real scripture -and- defend the argument from Evil.

I hope you find one. It can be difficult to have a challenging debate with many Mulims without being offensive. This is particularly true in the current political climate.

I did just look up the modal defense against Evil as I had not heard of it before. I assume when they mention natural evil they are referring to disease, earthquakes etc. I do wonder why these arguments appear to rest on God being entirely benevolent. I have never read or seen anything in the Bible or the Koran that suggested he was.

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CliffStamp
Hinduism takes a similar view, my partner for example simply notes that God appears to people in the way that is necessary for them to note they exist. They are a Hindu, but they don't reject other religions, they are just how other people interpret God's message. It is no different than how people make different arguments for a theory of gravity.

Cool, I did not know that about Hinduism. There could be an interesting debate to be had between Hindu and Islamic scholars. There is a current theory that all other religeons are misinterpretations of Islam and an American Doctor of Comparative Theology (also a convert to Islam) has devoted a lot of research to showing where these misinterpretations lie. I can't remember the guy's name but if I can track it down I will let you know.

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HedgeChopper

and an American Doctor of Comparative Theology (also a convert to Islam) has devoted a lot of research to showing where these misinterpretations lie. I can't remember the guy's name but if I can track it down I will let you know.

Please disregard this. It turns out I misinterpreted something my father had said. The Dr in question is actually Zakir Naik. He is Indian not American and his doctorate is medical not theological. He is an Islamic scholar though...

Apologies for talking rubbish.

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HedgeChopper

There is a current theory that all other religeons are misinterpretations of Islam

In general, most religions will tend to produce this if you poke at them a bit.

The central question then any mono-theist has to answer is "If it is the case that the God you describe exists, what are all the other people talking about as it doesn't seem to be that God?" .

There are only two answer to this :

a) they are all delusional / liars

b) they are talking about the same God it is just the way they interpret it

Islam for example and Christianity talk about the same people, however they interpret them differently. In Christianity Jesus is God, in Islam he is just man acting as messenger, he doesn't die and get resurrected.

Naik is an interesting guy, I bring him up to my partner all the time as it drives them mental so whenever we have a disagreement I quote a Naik argument to them. My favorite Naik quote is (paraphrase) :

"Dr. Naik, how come when Muslims come into countries like ours they are allowed to build Mosques, but when we go to countries which are predominantly Islamic we can not build our churches?"

Naik answers :

"Excellent question! The answer is because we have the right religion!"

He then goes on to argue that you would never hire a math teacher who teacher 2+2 = 5 would you, obviously not. Well we would not allow someone to build a temple which spreads a false religion. But obviously you should allow us to build a Mosque because we are teaching the right one. Silly Infidel, your religion is for kids.

(ok, he doesn't say the last part)

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CliffStamp
If it is not moral for you to make them comply then you are now saying that your moral actions can produce consequences which are immoral. This doesn't seem to make morality have any meaning at all.

"you" is referring to God, correct?

How could morality have any meaning if there was no way to act immorally? This leads back to free will. Why bother creating any rules if those rules could not be broken? If you do have rules that can be broken... now you have a game that needs a ref, and that is interesting.

If God is "omni-max" could he relinquish power or knowledge of future events? If the answer is yes, then wouldn't that be a good way to deal with lonliness/boredom of being all-knowing and all-powerful? You create the game, you create the players, you give them free will and you watch how it plays out.


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HedgeChopper

How can there ever be moral resolution?

It depends on the the standard of morality being applied.

The framework that Kagan outlines treats morality the same way that science treats gravity, the framework includes in it the method and process of knowing not just the what-is part. His framework (and I am really simplifying it) is basically that moral actions are those that would be done by a being which was perfectly rational and all knowing. He doesn't argue that being exists just like there can be an objective standard for a perfect circle even if in nature you can't physically see/make a perfect circle.

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If we leave aside the idea of an external arbitor of morality then it necessarily must be changing and somewhat fluid.

There is no way you can get to the conclusion from the premise and the fact that an idea is changing doesn't even mean it is subjective. The thing which has to be done first is seperate the nature of morality (what it is) vs how you can know morality. Germ theory for example made us aware of things but it didn't make the things exist. Similar, simply because we have conflict about something doesn't mean that it is subjective. Is gravity subjective? There are fairly strong conflicts now about the nature of gravity and our idea of it certainly has (and still is) changed.

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They challenged the morality of the establishment (those with power), accepted the, often horrific, consequences of doing so and managed to change societal morals.

Yes, and thus this reduces down to all that is needed to make a thing moral is nothing more than the power to do the thing. If the people who argued against slavery had lost it would still be moral to have slaves? If the people who opposed Hitler had lost then the Holocaust would have been moral? Again there are people who make this argument, there are even people who live their life in that manner.

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I am not familiar with Kagan but my question does not require that the person doing the killing enjoy the experience. They could be killing for money, revenge,prejudice or to eliminate a witness to a crime the motivation is not relevant.

Yes, it wasn't meant to be a representation of the question, just one of clarity.

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Can you construct an objective, moral argument that it is wrong to kill someone unlawfully?

Yes, again there are lots of objective moral frameworks as noted which can make objective arguments for any position. However some positions are very complicated and there is much contention over the morality. But again this doesn't mean it is subjective. I don't know lots of things, that doesn't mean they don't exist or they have to be subjective. I don't know your middle name for example.

Kagan is still actively publishing the rules by which his objective standard of morality can be interpreted and applied, the mathematics of it as you would. Some of it is fairly basic, some of it appears to be basic but isn't. Some questions are very non-trivial, is it moral to kill someone who wants to die? Even if you simplify this to the case that they are in pain from some disease making the moral argument is difficult because it is very easy to say "If that is true, then ..." and produce a consequence which you would not accept.

There are older frameworks than Kagan's but they all not strongly currently argued because while they sound strong on the surface (maximize some kind of utility for example) it is easily to provide examples which make you have to abandon them. Utilitarianism for example is strongly defeated by the doctor who chops up one person at random to save five injured people.

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I do wonder why these arguments appear to rest on God being entirely benevolent.

The argument of evil only works against an omni-max God, if God isn't omni-max then the problem doesn't exist. Evil is only a problem (or appears to be one) if God is all good, all knowing and all powerful. How can that God have a world where there is Evil, how is that a good thing? That is the logical problem of evil. it has been resolved with the modal defense.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/10/2014 03:23PM by CliffStamp.

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Chum

How could morality have any meaning if there was no way to act immorally?

That is the central conflict between determinism and free will. .

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If God is "omni-max" could he relinquish power or knowledge of future events?

Can an all knowing God not know something?

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CliffStamp
Can an all knowing God not know something?

No, but depending on how time works, he/she/it could conceivably know everything at one point in time and not in another.


Chumgeyser on Youtube
E-nep throwing Brotherhood. Charter Member

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Chum

No, but depending on how time works, he/she/it could conceivably know everything at one point in time and not in another.

God simply refers to that which created the universe, yes you could argue for a God in the sense you are describing it. We make lots of things for example and we learn about them after we have created it. Being able to make something doesn't mean you know all things about it.

However an omni-max God can't not know something in the way you are saying because it exists outside of time which is critical to the nature of the arguments for an omni-max God. Plus it is redefining what know means.

If for example I said I know German because I will learn it at a later date would you accept that as valid?

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The problem of omniscience vs determinism is as simple (and as complex) as this :

-In any given situation there are various possible actions, you do A
-God knew/knows you will do A

How can you have free will? You could not have done otherwise as God knew you would do A. There are many arguments to this, the two basic ones are :

-You are free to do other than A, however whatever you choose then God would have known that

and a very similar one which is best presented in a example :

If your child is hungry and you put two bowls in front of them, one is their favorite cereal and the other is a bowl of dead mice does the fact you know that your child will do mean they don't choose it?

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The central argument comes down to what free will means. The people who argue for free will and omniscience will say free will simply means not forced. People who argue for free will vs omniscience will argue that doesn't make sense because all actions are forced either by our physical nature or an influence from the environment.

If you posit free will then what is the source of it, what makes a person able to act outside of the physical nature of its being? This obviously is where a Theist says "God does that.". This is another of the strong arguments for God, if free will exists then it is very strong evidence for supernatural causes and if you allow supernatural causes then you are on a slippery slope away from atheism.

Now there is a fairly modern argument for free will which is basically summarized as the "Who cares?" argument. If we are determined and we "choose" to believe we have free will then all that shows is that we were determined to do it, no harm - no foul. You can't choose anything if you are determined. However if we really do have free will but we choose to believe we are determined and act in that manner then this is a serious problem.

Thus by default "choose" to believe you have free will and act accordingly.

This of course is the same time of argument as the famous wager of Pascal. If there is no God and you believe in one and act accordingly then no harm, no foul. But if God exists and you didn't believe then big problems await you. If you don't know then believe. The problem with this classic argument though is that most God's demand you believe for a specific reason and Pascal's doesn't work as the belief has to be genuine, you can't fake out God by crossing your fingers behind your back and saying "I believe", it isn't Judge Judy. Plus some belief systems radically affect how you live your life (and the length of it).



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/10/2014 03:14PM by CliffStamp.

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Islam for example and Christianity talk about the same people, however they interpret them differently. In Christianity Jesus is God, in Islam he is just man acting as messenger, he doesn't die and get resurrected.

That slight difference of perspective has resulted in many thousands of deaths in the last millenia or so. It is about the only thing that Christians and Muslims truly cannot reconcile. For a Christian it is heresy to believe that Christ was just a prophet and for a Muslim it is heresy to believe that Christ was divine and was resurrected after death.


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...basically that moral actions are those that would be done by a being which was perfectly rational and all knowing.

Interesting. I appreciate that your summary is probably missing Kagan's nuances but the perfectly rational part is worrying. You could arrive at some unpleasant results. I can't formulate a strong argument here as I will not claim to be perfectly rational or all knowing. There does seem to be the potential for some uncomfortable consequences to this though. It might well allow for automatic euthanasia at retirement age for example.

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HedgeChopper

If we leave aside the idea of an external arbitor of morality then it necessarily must be changing and somewhat fluid.

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Cliff

There is no way you can get to the conclusion from the premise and the fact that an idea is changing doesn't even mean it is subjective.

Fair enough. Reviewing what I typed you are right. There is at least one step missing from my argument.

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The thing which has to be done first is seperate the nature of morality (what it is) vs how you can know morality.

I agree with you here. The problem we are all having in this discussion is we have not established what morality is which means we are quite possibly arguing at cross purposes. For myself I consider morality (of action) to represent what ought or ought not to be done irrespective of results. For example stealing is immoral (to me). however if I were to find a rich man who had no use for their wealth beyond a big tacky house and another new Bentley I could steal their money and use it in such a way that the net effect of my actions was to benefit a great many people.it would still have been an immoral act though. That's a bit clunky but hopefully clear.

I just spent a little time doing a websearch of 'Objective Morality' the most coherent answer came from an Atheist Website and seemed to reference Kagan's idea of actions as determined by a perfectly rational being. If the action is being determined through pure rationality then that should lead to amoral actions ie. those that are not influenced by should or should not but what will the result be. They seemed to liken it also to Maslo's hierarchy of needs.

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Yes, and thus this reduces down to all that is needed to make a thing moral is nothing more than the power to do the thing. If the people who argued against slavery had lost it would still be moral to have slaves? If the people who opposed Hitler had lost then the Holocaust would have been moral? Again there are people who make this argument, there are even people who live their life in that manner.

Essentially yes. So far as Hitler and the Nazi party were concerned the Holocaust was moral. Slavery was considered moral well into the 20th C in some parts of the world. This is kind of my point.

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Utilitarianism for example is strongly defeated by the doctor who chops up one person at random to save five injured people.

I must be missing something. So far as I am aware that is a perfect example of utilitarianism not a refutation. I'm not a proponent of unmodified utilitarianism though and by the time you qualify it sufficiently to be workable it looses it's clarity and,no pun intended, it's utility.

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Chum

If God is "omni-max" could he relinquish power or knowledge of future events? If the answer is yes, then wouldn't that be a good way to deal with lonliness/boredom of being all-knowing and all-powerful? You create the game, you create the players, you give them free will and you watch how it plays out.

I think Chum is onto something. It must be quiet out there especially if you only have the goody two shoes for company. If man is created in God's image, think how much people enjoy reality TV!

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Cliff
...an omni-max God can't not know something in the way you are saying because it exists outside of time which is critical to the nature of the arguments for an omni-max God. Plus it is redefining what know means.

Surely an omnipotent and omniscient being can do, be or redefine anything it wishes. Reminds me of this conversation a friend claimed to have had with a Jehova's Witness:

F: Could God create a rock?

J W: Yes

F: A really really big rock?

JW: Yes, the size is not an issue.

F: Could God create a rock so stupendously big that God could not lift it?

JW: ..................................


No idea if it really happened but it is an interesting question.

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HedgeChopper

Surely an omnipotent and omniscient being can do, be or redefine anything it wishes.

A question such as "Could God make a taco so hot he could not eat it?" is basically asking Could God do something he could not do? The statement is without rational meaning.

A more subtle question of the same type would be if you asked God Is the statement "I am telling a lie." true or false? then what would it say. A more direct question is "Can God do evil acts?" .

If you argue omni-max to mean "can do even that which is irrational" then obviously you reach irrational conclusions because that is an irrational definition of God to start with.

As an omni-max being God is perfectly rational and all benevolent. Omnipotent means God is without limit in being able to be benevolent, is without limit in being able to be rational, is without limit in its nature of God.

Now of course you can define a God that does irrational things or that it doesn't know something until after it is done but when you do the arguments used to prove God exist such as noted in the above all fail.

Now there is no issue with this of course as long as you can argue that the definition you are using can be argued for.Or you just want to define God in such a way that it is obvious it doesn't exist.

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HedgeChopper
The problem we are all having in this discussion is we have not established what morality is which means we are quite possibly arguing at cross purposes.

At a basic level, a moral action is just that which ought to be done, which only implies two things :

-there is a choice
-the choice is not arbitrary and can be evaluated to be good/bad

Here is where it gets non-trivial, no one disputes the first part, however the second part is what all the fighting is about even on a basic level because the last part of the sentence is almost circular. If you say good choices are moral ones then the next question is "Ok, what are good choices then?" all you did was switch words, but that is at the very heart of morality.

If you say to me that you want to be a successful weight lifter and you are going to achieve this by looking at pictures of successful weightlifters it is likely I would suggest you actually train. Now if you don't train then it is very unlikely you will be a successful weight lifter - but would this mean you have made an immoral action by not training. The answer most people will say is no - because the goal is arbitrary and moral decisions are not arbitrary of that nature. This is what actually defines morality there is something that makes it not arbitrary, something that makes it different than allows the distinction and you can step in and say that is good/bad vs simply right/wrong.

Now not everyone agrees with this, there are people who reject moral realism and say that makes no sense. Ought only means something if you have a goal, if you tell me your goal then maybe I can say what you ought to do to achieve that goal. If you don't have a goal then you don't know what you ought to do as it isn't defined. But there is no way to just point out some goal and say this has to be your goal in this situation, or in general for your life. However if this can't be done then morality is meaningless and since it can't be done morality doesn't exist. There is no good/bad there are just right/wrong actions which are evaluated based on whatever goals are set.

This is the critical part, a moral realist will argue morality is a class of actions which are so separate that they are not just incorrect or correct but we had to create two new words - good/bad. The first question then is what makes something a moral action vs just a right/wrong action in general? Of course morality is easy once you know the goal as it then just becomes the actions which are necessary to achieve said goal. There might be debate sure, just like you can ask a jillion people how to be a successful weightlifter and you get all kinds of responses. However it is clear that we are actually learning and becoming better weightlifters (in the sense we can move more weight) and this is because we have the goal. However if I say to you that I want to be a X type of Y then can you evaluate my actions? That is the moral dilemma, what is the X and Y?

The problem is in morality we don't know what the goal is exactly or even how to define it such that it is a goal which is so different from other goals it is a moral type classification. We know how to maximize things, there is a huge wealth of math on how to do that. Now it is trivial to just assume a goal, but the problem is that unless you can justify this choice then morality disappears and there is no such thing as good/bad, just right or wrong and a moral action is no different than the decision to use a japanese waterstone vs an oil stone. Of course if you can do something then you can do it, that isn't even an interesting question. The interesting part is if you can do it does that mean you ought to do it.

Now you have to read Kagan to understand it, and I can't summarize multiple books/papers in a few lines, but again to just try to mangle it into a few sentences :

-morality is an ought
-ought means reason/justification
-rationality is the means by which reason/justification is created

He then develops morality by using concepts from set math such as a moral aspect is one in that if the aspect ss changed in a situation and all things stay the same aside from that then the morality has to change. This seems obvious but it has some direct consequences which may not be so obvious. Note he makes no assumptions here about morality at all, he just takes the definition and expands on it to create a method and framework. This is no different than :

-the universe exists
-we can experience the universe through our senses
-we can make sense out observations through rational processes

Thus we can know how the universe exists through science. This doesn't mean there won't be conflicts, it doesn't even mean we can know how the universe exists as it exists as in the statements we make map 1:1 with reality. It just defines a way of knowing to be that which can be said through observation and experiment. Then based on this you can develop methods which make this coherent and congruent.

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So far as I am aware that is a perfect example of utilitarianism not a refutation.

It is a refutation because people will typically not argue that ought to be done as it leads to conclusions that they will not accept just like they typically will not argue Hitler ought to have killed the Jews. As I noted, there are people who do even live according to those principles, morality to them is nothing more than the power to do a thing. If you can do it and you want to do it then you ought to do it. They are perfectly willing to accept that in all cases, live by the sword - die by the sword type of thing. That is however a perfectly coherent argument, it is just a form of moral nihilism.

I just have to say this. It is an interesting a thread originally started about a fictional characters weapon has mutated into a discussion about god and morality.
I especially find this interesting to read as a multi-theist with a strong shamanistic and balance based religion.
Basically the arguments seem very odd to me, and the concepts rather an anthropomorphizing a non human entity into one with human like thinking.
I really don't get it. Still interesting to read.

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TerriLiGunn

[...]


Basically the arguments seem very odd to me, and the concepts rather an anthropomorphizing a non human entity into one with human like thinking.
I really don't get it.

The fact that you can't do this is currently at the heart of most Christian (and Christian like) arguments for God in a defensive mode against arguments used to show their God can't exist. However as God made us in their image, it has to be true to basic extents.

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TerriLiGunn
I just have to say this. It is an interesting a thread originally started about a fictional characters weapon has mutated into a discussion about god and morality.
.

I had completely forgotten this thread was about zombies! Just gone back to read the first few pages.

On that note. Romero style. The point and attraction of zombies is that most of us are pretty sure we could deal with them in ones and twos, they aren't all that. The fear comes from large numbers and their relentless nature. The first Romero film was about alot more than just an outbreak of monsters.

Zombies are dead, they don't need to eat, sleep or rest. Constant feeding urge is presumably similar to rabid animals urge to bite - a transmission mechanism for the virus. Also they can function under water being uncoordinated probably leads to them floating about or walking on the bottom rather than swimming though.

Assuming you don't have custom made anti zombie weapons ahead of time, a heavy ball pein hammer with a fibreglass shaft, a couple of hammer through screwdrivers with sharpened points (worn operator style on some sort of chest rig) and a heavy duty pavement scraper thing. If custom is an option then I vote for a longer, steel version of a Maori green stone war club - they are proper nasty. Firearms are a tricky proposition in the UK so whatever I could loot from a downed police armed response unit which I think would consist of H&K MP5 with full stock (bonus supposed to be extremely easy to shoot and very accurate) and a 9mm pistol or two. I wouldn't fancy a shotgun because I wouldn't trust the pellets to penetrate a skull beyond point blank range.

World War Z was indeed an awful film, but a really good book.

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I especially find this interesting to read as a multi-theist with a strong shamanistic and balance based religion.

Interesting. I know it's a big ask but are you able to summarise your beliefs in any way? I have always been intrigued at how modern paganism would work. Don't worry if you aren't comfortable with that. I'm curious rather than looking to knock you.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/2014 01:34PM by HedgeChopper.