I think the whole anti-religion is generally focused towards Christianity and recently to some extent; Islam, because it's these that are fighting non-conforming ideals. And we don’t really see other religions making such claims. Hinduism has Gods, yet i never hear about them.
I think Buddha's an interesting example. Christians claim that God writes his law into our hearts, hence our conscience. Buddha makes a very robust and workable moral system while being an athiest. This system has caused many people to see no need to believe in God, when they might've otherwise have gone to a theistic religion to make sense of their lives. That means that either God had no part in his morality or God supported him, not minding the fact that he didn't believe in him.
Also, if God writes his law into our hearts and therefore conscience, why such a difference in morals and belief all around the world, even within Christianity?
Ahh, but if I'm not mistaken, Buddha based his morality upon a belief in the supernatural: ongoing spirits, and communion with those spirits, and other realms, and so forth. This is distinguishable from the "atheism" that Socrastein preaches.
No, stating that all desires are equal is an affirmative proposition, and you have done nothing to support it. -Ann The equality of desires rests on the existence or non-existence of superior desires. If superior desires exist, then obviously there is no equality of desires. If superior desires do not exist, then all desires are equal. Between the two propositions, "Superior desires exist" is the affirmative position - the existence or reality of something is being affirmed. Just like between the existence and nonexistence of Leprechauns, the affirmative position is "Leprechauns exist". Obviously, that leprechauns exist is not the rationally defualt position. We do not assume things exist until they are disproven, quite the contrary. Applying this common sense rationale to the equality of desires, we do not assume that there is someone out there with desires superior to everyone else's until this is disproven, we assume that no such person exists, that no superior desires exist, until it is proven that they do. So until you, or someone else, can tell me why your desires, or someone else's desires, are superior to everyone else's, I will rationally assume that everyone's desires are equal and that my premise is thus sound. This is a simple matter of onus, and one that is not disputed by those well versed in logic and reason. I do hope I needn't explain it to you again. This doesn't even address what is truly 'moral' when desires conflict (such as if person A gets his jollies by binding, torturing, and killing person B). If both desires are equally valid, then it would not be 'wrong' for either person to act in accordance with their own desires. -Ann United States Constitutional Law says that everyone has the right to believe and practice their religion as they see fit. If my religion commanded that I stop other people from practicing their religion, I would not be able to under constitutional law. BECAUSE everyone's right to belief is equal, no one can impose their beliefs on another. BECAUSE everyone's desires are equal, no one can impose their desires on another. To say that it is acceptable for someone to impose their desires on another person is to say that someone's desires are superior to the desires of another person - this contradicts the premise, so obviously you are wrong. I NEVER said everyone has the right to do whatever they want - because everyone's desires are equal, everyone's desires must be respected. Top level = looking at a very top level; providing an overview without going into great depth; popularistic; non-rigorous.-Ann Warn me next time when you're using a phrase so far out of normal context. I don't believe I've EVER heard the phrase "top level" used like that. Maybe it's just where I come from? As for your reasons why God's opinions are better than everyone else's: 1. Just because someone can enforce their opinions, doesn't make them right. Fallacy = appeal to force, argumentum ad baculum. 2. Just plain non-sequitur. 3. Informed judgement or not, it's still his personal opinion. How smart he is doesn't effect the <b>inherent value</b> of his personal opinion. Another non-sequitur. 4. So his opinion is inherently more valuable because he never changes it? Fallacy = Appeal to tradition. These properties of God that you think give his personal opinion inherent value, humans also have them, though in smaller quantities. This creates a hierarchy of value in opinion. Either you must admit that someone who can enforce and arbitrate, someone who is really smart, and someone who is stubborn in their opinion more so than another person has a more valuable opinion, or you must explain why it ONLY applies to someone who is most so. As for the transcendence of law - if I follow, God's law is supreme because it applies to the most people. But your definition of supreme is "applies to more people". So, god's law applies to most people because it applies to most people? I'm sure I'm reading you wrong, and so I'm asking you to clarify so that I don't make the mistake of assuming your explanation is self-affirming (aka, circular). As for your points to BendzR 1. Killing individuals is the exact opposite of preserving the species. The more people live, the more the species is preserved, obviously. 2. Same as one. 3. Same as one. When did the good of the species become the good of the most genetically fit? Evolution is about preserving genes, you're killing genes, what a striking contradiction. 4. Same fallacy, over and over again. 5. Strike 5. You've tacitly changed the premise from "Good shall be defined as whatever most promotes the survival of the species" to "Good shall be defined as whatever most promotes the survival of really healthy people." Obviously, this is in bad taste. And just because you find the moral system disagreeable, doesn't mean it isn't a moral system. Your interpretation is hideously misdirected, but let's assume it's spot on for argument's sake. It's still transcendent, it still defines right and wrong. Therefore it's a consistent and universal moral system that makes no reference to God. You may not like it, but so what? I'm sure I don't like your moral system either. Doesn't mean yours isn't a transcendent moral system nonetheless, no does it? As a fairly-pointless-but-trivial example, think of what it means to have a 'moral' society. If the society defines morality, then there can be no such thing as a 'moral' society, and no such thing as an immoral society, or a good society or a bad society. In such a case, it would be impossible for our societies (yours and mine) to judge the Nazi perpetrators to have done anything 'wrong', since they were following orders, and the values and dictates of their social group.-Ann From the perspective of any society with differing morals, Nazi is wrong. But only from someone with different morals. People with the same morals as the Nazis don't think they're wrong. Obviously. We can and do judge other societies, every society and every person does it, and they all do it from the perspective of their personal morality. - Timmy - I was trying to be concise actually. In fact, it's when I'm too concise that things fall into petty semantics, because I wasn't elaborate enough on exactly what I meant by what I said. Obviously I wasn't elaborate enough, because my most "concise" premise is the one that wrought the most confusion, was it not? I've had to become successively more elaborate in my explanations to Ann because every time I failed to be specific enough for her to understand. This last response of mine I had to spend hundreds of words explaining a concept as simple as the burden of proof!
I'm not an expert in the history but I think that rather it be based on beliefs I think it was more a case of "try see what works". I think the beliefs are more the conclusion he came to afterwards.
If by your most concise premise you mean your original post in this thread, then no, I don't agree, you made it too complicated, thus increasing the potential for confusing people. You could simply have said it like this: "It is perfectly possible to construct a moral code based on principles other than those laid out by religion. For example, you could have a moral code based on the notion that it is wrong to put your own happiness and desires above the happiness and desires of others. Crimes such as rape or theft would thus be prohibited by such a code because to commit them is to put yourself before others." I don't see anything in your original post that I've left unexplained in my revised version. I just haven't tried to pad it out with needless wordage and examples. The fact is you don't have to spend hundreds of words explaining simple concepts, but you just choose to because it gives you a chance to demonstrate how eloquent you are. This means that you then have to waste even more time trying to explain what you originally meant. Keeping it as simple as possible while still illustrating your point is key when it comes to convincing people of your argument. While it might be satisfying to be able to say "obviously you're too unintelligent/uneducated/illiterate to understand what I'm saying here", if you're genuinely trying to convince people that you're right rather than show off how clever you are you're not going about it the right way.
I still want to know why it's immoral for a set of particles to progress from one set of quantum states to another, as the laws of physics dictate (which is what happens when you stick a knife through someone's throat). Here's another thing I'd like to bring up: if we have a gas at a certain temperature at thermal equilibrium, not radiating and not in contact with any other system, it has a fixed total energy. Even at thermal equilibrium, though, all the particles don't have the same energy (and to put them all permenantly in the same energy state requires a reduction of entropy, so it's never going to happen). Their energy distribution follows a boltzmann distribution. Some particles have more energy, some have less. Surely this is saying that it's more important for some particles to have energy than others, which is an unsupportable proposition.
I was actually using that as an argument against Socrastien's initial post, which it doesn't appear you agree with.
you simply try to show that morality comes out of the supposedly rational mind of human beings-Zfactor I'm showing that it CAN come out of a sense of being rational. It can also come out of a pure sense of empathy which is emotionally inspired, having nothing to do with rationality. There are many, many ways one can construct moral guidelines without appealing to God. How can you deny that? Your arguments are fallacious because the only way you can relevantly disprove my argument is to 1) Show where and how I actually appealed to the metaphysical in my argument or 2) Show how my argument isn't actually a moral guideline. Anything else is simply irrelevant straw man arguments. But if everyone's happiness and unhappiness hold zero importance, there's no reason to care if anyone is unhappy. Perhaps we could even say that a person's happiness or unhappiness only has importance to himself, in which case your theory breaks down.-AZeitung When did I speak of the importance of happiness? My argument rests on the importance of being logically consistent and not acting on unsound principles. Regardless, ANY theory can break down if the right premises are assumed. That does NOT make it any less of a moral theory. Utilitarianism also breaks down if we assume that happiness is irrelevant - does that mean utilitarianism isn't really an atheistic moral system? Virtue theory breaks down if we assume that character is irrelevant - it's still an atheistic moral system. Deontology breaks down if we assume the categorical imperative is irrelevant, but it's still an atheistic moral system. I could go on, but hopefully you can see how your argument has absolutely no bearing on the fact that my argument proposes an atheistic morality. The laws of physics alone don't allow for morality. They don't allow for free will, or any type of "will" whatsoever. There is no fundimental difference between sentientience and non-sentience, physically speaking, or even life and non-life. All we have are a collection of particles progressing through predicated energy states. The entire system of the universe is progressing exactly as it must as time passes. However it happens, who are we to say that the way it is progressing is "moral" or "immoral", if there's nothing else?-AZeitung This is a perfect example of the fallacy of composition. You're applying properties of the parts to the whole itself. It's a reductionist approach that completely ignores the relevant levels of abstraction. "That's not a person, that's just a large collection of a few trillion cells." "That's not a car, that's just a bunch of connected metal pieces." "That's not a football game, that's just a bunch of organisms running and colliding on a field of grass." Your post isn't a meaningful argument, it's just a bunch of black lines and shapes "It is perfectly possible to construct a moral code based on principles other than those laid out by religion. For example, you could have a moral code based on the notion that it is wrong to put your own happiness and desires above the happiness and desires of others. Crimes such as rape or theft would thus be prohibited by such a code because to commit them is to put yourself before others."-Timmy I see what you're saying, but in my experience on this forum and others when debating philosophical issues, the above would have been quickly met with "Prove it/Explain it" and thus I would have had to put the argument into syllogistic form so I could explicitly show what you implicitly argued. Consider the fact that I STARTED with the explicit syllogism, and I STILL had people respond "Prove it/explain it". In your opinion, I was too elaborate. But judging from nearly every response to my opening post, I wasn't elaborate enough. The rest of your post is just rude and presumptuous. You say I'm trying to make myself look good, I say I'm trying to avoid as much later clarification as possible. Nearly every time I try to be as simple as possible, I'm asked to further elaborate. So now I just elaborate to begin with. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not immoral unless you think it is, morality is subjective.-Maverick Exactly.
If it's based on meaningless principles, then how is it still a valid theory? It requires the assumption that it is important for people to be happy. Suppose I assign importance to having long toenails. I could create an atheistic theory of morality in which giving or recieiving petticures is immoral. That doesn't change the fact that I've picked an arbitrary set of principles and designated them as morality without any meaningful reason behind them. Besides, by your logic, there's an unsound premise involved in the atoms in a gas in thermal equilibrium not all having the same kinetic energy, as per my previous post. Why should we even assume that individual happiness is more important than the amount of energy that atoms in a gas have? And anyway, even if we assume the very shaky premises on which you've based your theory are true, my happiness might be more important than yours, if I have access to a nuclear weapon and am contemplating setting it off, as the mood suits me. Where are the levels of abstraction? A collection of particles occupies a set of quantum states, which progress according to the laws of physics. There's no abstraction about it. I can tell you exactly how the system is going to progress, and there's nothing involved with that progression other than the laws of physics. Tell me what magical level of abstraction you believe in that is somehow involved which causes people to transcend this idea and not chairs or rocks. BTW, I said a system of particles, which is the whole. A part would be a single particle. Physics is perfectly capable of dealing with incredibly large systems of particles. In fact, we can usually tell you more about properties of the whole system than of individual parts because of statistical properties.
you can no more prove to me that God exists, than you can prove to me that tomorrow morning the sun will rise. Of course you are asking to have it proved before sunset tonight........ Wouldnt it be a shame to wake up after death and find out your were wrong!!!! Mike O'Leary
You're missing the point. People might choose utilitarianism if they figure that it's important for people to be happy. If they don't then they'll find a moral system that does fit their beliefs. He accepts that not everyone will have the same basic principles. That's where the relativism comes in.
So in other words, it's completely meaningless and arbitrary, right? Maybe this is why people in sciences think philosophy majors are idiots. Nobody doubts that an atheist can make up an arbitrary set of principles and call it morality. But nobody cares, either.
Nowhere do I make that assumption. You are trying to show that I did, so you can attack an assumption I never made, which is known as a non-sequitur straw man fallacy. Once again, the only "importance" is that one not act on false premises, which I explicitly stated. The only other assumption I make, is that "My desires are superior" is a false premise. Please, if you are capable, and I know you are, try attacking what I'm saying so your posts have some measure of relevence. Oh, and once again, even if I DID assume that it was important for people to be happy, that doesn't make it any less of an atheistic moral theory. Virtue theory assumes it's important for people to avoid vice and develop character - if you don't accept that assumption, then so much for that theory. But it's STILL a valid atheistic moral theory. How can you possibly fail to grasp that? Besides, by your logic, there's an unsound premise involved in the atoms in a gas in thermal equilibrium not all having the same kinetic energy, as per my previous post. Why should we even assume that individual happiness is more important than the amount of energy that atoms in a gas have? No, not by my logic. By your impression of what I was saying. Which, as usual, is very poor. Let's cut through all your rhetoric and failed attempts to understand and get to the core of this, so we can see just how "shaky" my premises are. 1) When you impose your desires on others, you're acting as though your desires are intrinsically more important than others. 2) All desires are equal. 3) From 1 and 2, acting as though your desires are intrinsically more important than others is nonsensical. 4) Therefore, imposing your desires on others is irrational. Which do you care to attack? Do you deny that imposing your desires tacitly assumes your desires to be superior? Good luck with that one. Do you deny that there are no intrinsically superior desires? I'd love to hear your proof that your desires somehow have more intrinsic value than another person. Especially when you seem to refuse to acknowledge anything that can't be explained through physics. 3 and 4 follow from 1 and 2, so you can only attack them by refuting 1 and 2. Like I said before, like every other moral theory, mine is internally consistent if you accept the key premise - irrational and logically contradictory actions are to be avoided. If you don't accept this premise, that does not effect the consistency of the theory. Now that I've laid everything out in plain english for you, be a good chap and see if you can manage to stay on-topic this go around. Levels of abstraction refers to the way we humans as sentient, subjective beings classify objectively meaningless things. There is no objective difference between a dog or a cat - there IS a subjective difference between the two. There is no objective value to a painting, or a bright sunset, there is subjective value to it however. There is no objective measure of morality, morality has no objective reality, it is only a subjective construct. This is what is meant by abstraction, adding subjective levels to objectively meaningless things. Science does the same thing, and I'm quite surprised you don't understand this. Biology is really a convenient abstraction for what is really nothing but chemistry on a small enough scale. Still further, chemistry is another convenient abstraction for what is really nothing but physics on a small enough scale. And there are scientists who believe that physics is just an abstract manifestation of logic, on a very fundamental scale. you can no more prove to me that God exists, than you can prove to me that tomorrow morning the sun will rise. Of course you are asking to have it proved before sunset tonight........ Wouldnt it be a shame to wake up after death and find out your were wrong!!!!-Mike I might not be able to deductively prove that the sun will rise, but I can give you an inductive proof with about 99.99999% certainty that it will. Can you give so much certainty that God exists? I strongly doubt it. So in other words, it's completely meaningless and arbitrary, right? Maybe this is why people in sciences think philosophy majors are idiots.-AZ Once again you keep applying an objective perspective to subjective matters, fallaciously. Perhaps if you had a basic understanding of philosophy and logic, you'd refrain from making such pitiful "arguments". I'm sure you can conduct experiments like the best of them, but when it comes to constructing logically consistent arguments... If I remember correctly, you're a theist are you not?
Sure you did, because if everyone's happiness is worth nothing, my happiness is worth the same amount as that of 10 people combined. If hapiness and unhappiness have no value, they both have the same value, and the net gain by preventing the fulfillment of desires is the same as the net gain by allowing the fulfillment of desires. If being happy - by having your desires fulfilled - is worth nothing, why should we base morality around it? My morality based solely on toenail length becomes just as valid as your morality based on fulfillment of desires. We could pick any number of valueless things to base morality on - fullfillment of deisres does not become unique unless it has some value to it. You can't base anything meaningful around a concept with zero value. It just doesn't work. As I said before, it's completely arbitrary and worthless. I never said that you couldn't make up arbitrary concepts and call them morality. But who cares? I can base an atheistic theory of morality around a completely contradictory concept if I want. The theory becomes trivial - which is exactly what I've been saying from the beginning. I never claimed that it was a logical fallicy, just completely trivial and lacking in any meaning. How can YOU possibly not see that? Why is the fulfillment of desires more important than the distribution of energy. Explain it to me, please. I'm curious. I would really like to know. I disagree. I say processes are taking place that have no concept of desire that lead to a macroscopic outcome that you choose to describe as "imposing your desires on others". Your description is only a macroscpic, simplified, incomplete approximation of a much more complex physical process that is going on. I disagree. Why are all desires equal? You want me to prove that they aren't? Prove that they are. The statement that all desires are equal is a nice postulate, but I haven't ever seen anyone prove it. Although depending on your answer to my next statement, it could be seen as a proof that all desires aren't equal. What if both my friend and I want to kill a guy, just for kicks. Do our two desires outweigh his one desire to live? If all desires are equal, it seems to me that we should kill him. You could also argue that it's irrational not to do whatever benefits yourself the most. That sounds valid to me. Is the lottery immoral? Doesn't it treat the winner's desires as more important than all the people who didn't win? Is the lottery irrational? All of them.
Quote: "I might not be able to deductively prove that the sun will rise, but I can give you an inductive proof with about 99.99999% certainty that it will. Can you give so much certainty that God exists? I strongly doubt it" Response: But with the same accuracy I can prove that God exists. Your case is built on the fact that the sun rose this morning........ so is mine....... You base your coclusions on the faith that our science is up to date and complete, as did those who used leeches to bleed patients hundreds of years ago. You have faith that the sun will rise every morning. Just because things happen in repitition doesnt mean that they always do. Just because something happened this morning that science explains doesnt mean that science wont have a completly different explanation for it in another hundred years. "The only constant is change" this is a scientific fact and it is the catch all for when new evidence is found that changes the current beleif. Given that, back to my original post.... so what if you wake up one morning and find out that you were wrong? From what I can see this post has come to this fact.... is there or is there not a supreme being of some sort that has a design, or an effect on things. seperate this from religion, religion is as science, it changes with time, the basic premis of a higher power or entity is the only constant. If science is so perfect, why are we slowly killing our planet and ourselves? Mike O'Leary
AZeitung The first part of your post applies objective perspective to subjective values, again. Should I assume you're simply incapable of avoiding this fallacy? Again with the second part, you do the same thing. From an objective perspective, morality is trivial, yes. So is EVERYTHING. Practice a little pragmatism and apply some methods that don't reduce everything to nothing. You're behaving like a bad philosopher AZeitung, which is ironic for someone who seems to detest them. I would like to know, even more, how your question is meaningful. So is everything everyone says. Your point? Your study of science has apparently completley skewed your perception of reality and rendered it impractical, pseudophilosophical tripe. You're confusing the onus here. I already thoroughly explained it to Ann, more than once. Go back and do some reading, I'm getting sick of repeating myself. No, that's just an example of TWO people imposing their desires on someone else. I don't know where you got the idea that desires were legos that you could piece together to make a Megazord of desires. The lottery isn't a sentient being. For someone who takes the most ridiculous reductionist approach to everything, destroying all abstraction, I find it odd that you would anthropomorphize something to make a point. Maybe for the next round you could try real hard to avoid reducing everything in your attempt to show off your scientific knowledge. I am well aware, as is everyone else here, that on a very reductionist scale everything is nothing but interacting particles obeying the laws of physics. I'm sure you feel smart when you show everyone you know this, but you're doing nothing but destroying meaningful discussion by ignoring the necessity and use of abstraction and subjective meaning. If you can't stop doing it, I'll be forced to assume that meaningful discussion is impossible with you.
Mike Not just that it rose this morning, but that it rose yesterday morning, and the day before that, and the day before that, every single morning for as long as humans have been around, and there has never been a recorded instance of the sun not rising, in thousands of years. Inductive reasoning would suggest that we can be almost absolutely certain that the sun will rise again. So what inductive argument can you make for God that you think gives you the same level of certainty? In the era you reference, there was no scientific method applied to medical science, which is why people applied medicine in ineffective, completely unjustified ways. As for faith in science, there's no need. Faith by definition is belief without evidence or reason. Science is founded on purely evidence and reason. So believing in science and scientific truths is the EXACT opposite of faith. You couldn't be more wrong if you tried. No, actually, that's not a scientific fact, nor a scientific hypothesis, nor a scientific theory or law. It's not even a scientific statement. You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. Do you actually have a concrete argument to make? Do you have an argument to prove God? Or an argument to discredit science? Or do you rely on vague blabbering and ridiculous attacks to make your pseudopoints?
