I guess Calico Jack’s school is out for the holidays. :rolleyes:
I think he’s trying to argue that secular morality actually comes from somewhere else, but merely that secularists either don’t or won’t admit it.
“could be”? I assume you mean “couldn’t be” but in any case they haven’t. Are you privy to any? You have all your work ahead of you I’m afraid. The natural world behaves (morality and all) exactly as you’d expect without recourse to a higher power. You are making the fantastic claim that such a being is needed and hinting at the even more fantastic position that one actually exists.
You need to bring the evidence that will shift us from the default position of a purely natural explanation.
The physical world exists, animals exist, evolution of characteristics and behaviours occurs, I have no difficulty in seeing human morality in exactly the same way as a monogamous albatross. A spectrum of behaviours exists. Some helpful some harmful.
No god needed.
Your question on the problem of rape misses the point. A successful evolutionary path for humans is their ability to organise socially and codify behaviour with systems of justice and punishment.
I guess – but if he’s expecting that emotional response, I guess I figured “emotion” could pretty much do double duty as the source. I mean, if he’d built an argument around secularists responding to food and drink as if they were hungry or thirsty, then I’d figure he already sort of knows that they really do feel that way – and that they slake their thirst accordingly, because, hey, thirst.
We can stroke our beards and ponder why people experience thirst – and we’d probably come up with obvious and sensible answers – but the real point is that the thirst is already, like, right there, y’know?
It’s also not used in any modern secular ethics. I’d compare it to the ontological argument, i.e. something that was debunked and is therefore no longer in use, buuuuuuut people still use the ontological argument, so there’s still actually reason to debunk it.
Um… What?
Most women who choose to get pregnant do so because they have weighed the short-term pain of childbirth against the long-term pleasure of being a parent. Or hell, even just the short-term pleasure of having sex. I fail to see how this is in any way a refutation of the argument - many people would say that having children was the greatest joy they ever experienced. You’ve oversimplified the argument to the point of meaninglessness.
This surface-level examination does not do the argument justice whatsoever. If you’d like a good explanation of this, check out Matt Dillahunty’s. I can’t really do it justice, but the idea is, basically, that there are certain ways we can improve or worsen our lives through our actions, and that if we want to have good lives (as good a goal for morality as I’ve ever seen), we should aim for those that improve our lives, collectively. This leads us to a moral framework we can use to evaluate the choices made in our lives, for good or ill.
But that’s two completely different issues. Altruism is not inherently good, but if you’re arguing that without god, people would just rape or murder, you’re just flat-out scientifically wrong. I’ve raped as many people as I’ve wanted to. I’ve killed as many people as I’ve wanted to.
Nobody has ever said that.
Or that.
Let’s start with this hole:
Or this hole:
Because again, this argument is generally not put forward. The Nazis happened. Then cognitive and behavioral research happened. We know better now.
No shit. Which is why nobody uses it.
Humans are naturally altruistic and have instincts. This is not news. This is not a matter of contention in modern secular morals.
You’ve conquered Mount Haybale. Congratulations. When you’d like to take a gander at sophisticated secular morality, consider looking to the work of Harris, Dillahunty, Singer, or indeed any other notable thinkers in the realm of secular ethics. Until then, I’m left wondering where you found these absurd and twisted versions of the arguments you dissected. Did they actually come from any notable thinkers in the area? Or did you pull them off Yahoo Answers or the Youtube Comments or something?
What does any of this have to do with morality? Why is this valuable? Why should we care about it? What does it even mean for something to be innately good? Is murder innately wrong? Is it still wrong if I do it to save a million lives? A billion?
Again: what a bizarre, surface-level reading of the source material. Have you ever actually read any of the subject material you’re getting into? This would be like me saying “God doesn’t exist, and I can prove it”, and then debunking the following arguments:
- God exists because evolution is wrong
- God exists because look at the trees
- God exists because I believe he exists
- God exists because the bible says so
…Except that, as previously said, those are actually arguments people still use, so you might actually need to debunk them. The kind of arguments you “debunked” here I have literally never heard from anyone.
How does one determine an “objective source”, and why should we care what that objective source has to say? If that objective source doesn’t lead us to living good lives, I see no point in acknowledging it or accepting it.
That’s an unusual litmus test. While people place a wide spectrum of value on social contacts, there are very few who have zero interest in it. I’d say the exceptions are so rare that your litmus test fails itself.
Your street gang example also fails. The street gang is itself an example of a society; the members of the gang comply with the social standards of the gang. So your example supports my position and contradicts yours.
And I never brought ethics up as the abstract you seem to be reaching for. I don’t claim ethics exist as some objective set of rules ordained by God or Natural Law or General Will. Ethics are just the standards society holds its members to. If you want to be a part of a society, you have to live within its standards. Being as people want to live in a society, they follow the rules.
They evolved from human interrelationships. In some cases “secular morals” were inspired by but no longer are tied to religious doctrine, which was discarded in large measure due to its many precepts which have become recognized as immoral.
Can you possibly be serious here? It causes a lot of other people much more pain.
Just addressing the “fittest” thing here. “Survival” isn’t just passing your genes along to the next generation. It’s them surviving beyond that. While the Octomom has Trump beat 8 to 5 in the first part, the real question is how many of those kids are going be reach reproductive age and have children of their own versus meeting untimely ends at the hands of a lover, a cop, or themselves? Indeed, your hypothetical welfare mother might have to have ten kids just to insure that one or two of them make it that far.
Trump has only provided a semi-stable home for his kids but arguably not having him around all that much has proven a net benefit. Clearly, whatever emotional issues might have resulted from having Donald Trump as a father, are outweighed by having a lot of $$$.
OK, I’mma play my Woman Card here. Let’s just stop with the pain of childbirth example, because it’s stupid. Not only do women not care about the pain of childbirth when weighed against the joy of parenthood, or whatever thing makes us sound all noble… Thousands of women go out of our way and pay tens of thousands of dollars in order to experience that pain. Why pay for IVF when you could adopt or hire a surrogate? Because, for some women, the experience of childbirth is itself a pleasure, a joy, and the physical pain that accompanies it doesn’t make it not so.
Not to mention epidurals exist. Don’t want pain? We can do that.
The rest of the OP, I can’t even really address, because it’s all Straw Men that bear no resemblance to the actual arguments put forth by people who maintain that one can be ethical without being religious. It’s as if one wants to argue that The Bible is all wrong by using nothing but quotes from The Cat In The Hat. Like, I literally don’t even know how to address that.
Please avoid appearing to take shots at other posters like this. If you feel you must, the Pit is right around the corner.
[/moderating]
In theory true, but in practice look at how many ‘welfare generations’ go on to reproduce; most children born on welfare aren’t killed in ghettos or foster homes.
So sure, Trump’s kids might be safer in a mansion than in a section 8 housing, but doesn’t automatically mean they’ll outlive anyone who grows up on welfare.
Point is that as far as human life is concerned, it’s common sense that not everything that’d be ‘fit’ from a purely animalistic POV is considered good or wise to do, such as having children on welfare, so using ‘natural selection’ or ‘survival of the fittest’ as a basis for secular ethical theories provides a weak foundation.
So can you tell us, with some credible cites, how many ‘welfare generations’ go on to reproduce? Also, it would be helpful if you would define “‘welfare generations’”.
Can you give a cite for your assertion that “most children born on welfare aren’t killed in ghettos or foster homes”?
Regarding “survival of the fittest”:
Fit for what?
Consider the polar bear.
Put him on an Arctic coastline, and he is an apex predator.
Put him in the Sahara Desert, and he is buzzard chow.
“Fitness” is highly dependent on context.
Behavior that is advantageous to a hunter-gatherer, may be detrimental to a farmer.
Behavior that is advantageous to a rural dweller, may be detrimental to an urban dweller.
Regarding altruism:
In the great bloodstained Darwinian struggle for survival:
Friends increase your probability of survival.
Enemies decrease your probability of survival.
Therefore, it is in your interest to make friends, and to avoid making enemies.
Therefore, it is in your interest to consider the needs and wants of others, as well as yourself.
It does not require any innate instinct, or appeal to emotion.
It merely requires the ability to give long-term needs priority over short-term desires.
It requires the ability to calculate that a long-term benefit is worth a short-term cost.
It requires the ability to calculate that a long-term reward is worth a short-term risk.
I think that’s the OP’s point. Why should Ted Bundy care if he’s causing other people pain? The only person he cares about is Ted Bundy and he derives pleasure from committing rape and murder.
The OP is apparently arguing that the reason everyone doesn’t act like Bundy is because most people accept an ethical code that derives from a higher power.
Other people agree that most people don’t act like Bundy and adhere to an ethical code. We just dispute the OP’s belief that this code has to come from a higher power. Our argument is that a group of people can generate their own ethical code internally.
If I’m understanding the OP correctly, he disagrees with this because he feels individuals will only follow an ethical code if it has the authority of a higher power behind it; people will not accept an ethical code that was created by other people. Again, many of us disagree.
My starting points for my secular ethical decisions are these two axioms:
-
No person has more or less right to exist or thrive than any other person (until such time as they may give up or ameliorate that right through their own actions).
-
No action is ethical unless a society where everyone commits that action is sustainable*.
These two axioms are probably not reducible further, and they are not entirely distinct from each other but are each partial re-statements of the other. They don’t depend on any of the straw man arguments proposed by the OP, nor any non-secular source. They seem to me to be self-evident (the second is my re-statement of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, or the Golden Rule if you prefer).
*To elaborate on the second point: no society where everyone took more than they produced would be sustainable; on the other hand, there would be no problem if everyone voluntarily gave at least one other person more than that person produced. In other words, it is not ethical to force anyone else to support you, but it is ethical for someone else to support you if they want. Parents supporting their own minor children is a special case with ramifications I won’t go into here, but they should be obvious. There are lots of easier examples, such as that a society where everyone robbed, or murdered, or cheated in business would not be sustainable.
Anyway, I don’t really want to argue the examples, I am only presenting an example of framework that seems to me to contradict the OP.
Yeah, I mean you’re right anyway about the real reason this argument is so weak - insofar as it condenses down to “only an external force can have created a morality that is good”, how could we possibly judge it to be good, unless we were already able to make quality judgments about good and bad independently of the external force.
Or in other words:
If only an external force can create ‘good’ morality, then we would have no way to recognise it as ‘good’.
If we are capable of recognising an externally-generated moral framework as ‘good’, then we are capable of selecting a good one that arises out of random noise - no need for intelligent design.
The central conceit of the OP, and where the whole thing falls down, is that it assumes an explanation for ethics that isn’t grounded in logic (even logic stuffed to the gills with straw like the OP) is somehow not real, or nor “worthy” or something.
That’s bullshit. A piece of philosophical sleight-of-hand, all unexamined axiom and unstated premise adding up to a Svengali deck that is designed to come to a foregone conclusion.
Science and logic are not the only modes of operation for us, or the only answer for human questions (and I say that as a sometime-scientist, and a theological noncognitivist).
“Ethics comes from people, and doesn’t always make sense nor does it have to” is a perfectly fine explanation.
Socrates’ question to Euthyphro: Do the gods command us to do good things or are things good because the gods command it?
If you accept the idea that the gods (or God or whatever other higher power you invoke) is telling us to do something because it is good, then you’re necessarily accepting the idea that there is a standard of good that exists independently of the higher power. Most people who invoke a higher power aren’t going to accept that idea. And even if you shrug that off, you’re still left with the question of where the standard came from. There must ultimately be a highest power which imposes the standard rather than having the standard imposed upon it.
But the opposite approach seems arbitrary. It’s saying there’s no real moral standard of good and bad. It’s just whatever choices a higher power happened to make. The higher power could just as easily have dictated the reverse. And because nothing is inherently good or bad, we’re not adhering to a code out of a sense of morality. We’re just obeying the whims of a higher power to appease that higher power.
Much of your argument hinges on strawmen, but let’s just dispose of the argument I’ve excerpted. You contrast moral “codes created by societies or individuals” with those created by God or Jesus or Buddha.
Many of us will argue that the moral codes in Old and New Testament were created by individuals. In particular, Buddha himself never argued that his precepts were divinely inspired.