"I was searching frantically for anything that would help me get through this... But everything I found had to do with God: putting your faith in God, believing that God had some sort of plan. I found nothing to help me."Nothing to help me.
January 16, 2013
"I'm an atheist... Eric is in the ground, rotting."
"I know it sounds horrible to say that, but that is where he is. How is that a better place?"
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256 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 256 of 256mccullough wrote;
Who said everything is relative? I said you can't know. If you know the Christian God exists and Osama knows Allah exists, how do we tell which of you is right? How do we know whether or not you are both wrong?
How can you not know? Its your thought process. You either think you can answer it objectively or only subjectively. and you either think it's only right because that is your personal opinion or because it is absolutely right or wrong because IT IS absolutely right or wrong.
You don't have to therfore know the face of god, but you should at least understand WHY you believe the things you do. If you are hanging out with a consensus of your friends and they find a woman and rape her, aren't they right based on the consensus argument. Or are you going to say, "I don't care what my friends say, raping a woman is wrong". if you say the latter then you believe in objective morality.
Meaing, rape is wrong whether you want it to be wrong or not. A sociopath could weigh the pros and cons and simply not care about the value judgements of others and simply say its right because his sexual gratification is right.
But if you are arguing that rape is definitively wrong it requires a moral universe. Morlity that is true whether you want it to be or not.
And Im saying because you are an atheist you can't actually appeal to that objective morality because it can't exist logically for you. So you are left with subjctive arguemnts emanating only from yourself.
If you think rape is ok, then it is.
Sure, death is a big cause of lamentation for everyone. And after reading the article linked to and the comments by Carnifex, it made me ponder a verse from the Bhagavad Gita, thusly:
All created beings are unmanifest in their beginning, manifest in their interim state and unmanifest again when annihilated. So what need is there for lamentation.
We can say that for the atheists who do not believe in the existence of the soul and by extension in the afterlife there should be no cause for lamentation. As when the material elements when dismantled , the manifestation becomes again unmanifested and remains as atoms in the ultimate stage. The law of conservation of energy remains, but in the course of time things are manifested and unmanifested – that is the difference. What is the cause for lamentation in the stage of manifestation and unmanifestation? Somehow , even in the unmanifested stage , things are not lost.
On the other hand, those who accept that these material bodies are perishable in due course of time but the soul is eternal, then we must remember that a body is like a dress. The material body has no factual existence in relation to the eternal soul. It’s something like a dream. In a dream we may think of flying in the sky, or sitting on a chariot as a king but when we wake up we can see that we are neither in the sky nor seated on the chariot.
Therefore in either case whether one believes in the existence of the soul or one does not believe in the existence of the soul, there is no cause for lamentation for the loss of the body.
Of course, we should grieve if we must but a little introspection on the idea similar the quote above may help us in moving forward.
BTW, about religious people being proponents of slavery - two of the greatest defenders of American slavery, John C. Calhoun and Thomas Jefferson, were both of dubious Christian standing, Jefferson being the original American deist, and Calhoun being some sort of fallen Presbyterian who fell into a meaningless Unitarianism probably adapted as protective coloration necessary for a politician active during the Second Great Awakening.
I've given him hassles before, but Revenant is a very interesting, loving and intelligent being. Whatever "coordinates" the universe is better off for having him in it.
Even if it is up to humans - and not a deity - to make meaning, or to forge a workable understanding of morality, doesn't mean those things don't exist or aren't "real".
I don't know which it is and I'm not really sure it matters all that much to me either way. Apatheism and theological noncognitivism (ignosticism) are under-appreciated approaches to the argument over the Deity-Non Deity dichotomy.
When you reduce God, the Almighty to a necessary base for moral axioms, I can't help but think you've put the cart before the horse. Man doesn't need God to be moral, if he needs him at all, it's for something more important than mere ethics. Reason and the categorical imperative will suffice for ethics and morality, I rather think.
Reason is not morality and is in fact a horrible basis for moral arguments.
Reason can lead you to very amoral or immoral ends. The final solution was a soltuion based on REASON. Ted Bundys arguments were a rejection of "value judgements" based on REASON. it would be unreasonable to assume that reason must be moral.
And I never said man needs god to be moral. If there is no God and no moral universe then everyone is determining their own morality. That is a morality. It's just not an objective one. And that morality alllows for people like Hitler and Ted Bundy. Without god everytyhing is permissable as was said.
If we are going to look at two people who think they are the arbiters of their own morality and one person takes it to mean they can killl people with impunity and nother takes it to mean that they should help the poor, who is right? Without an objective framework its pretty much whoever you agree with.
There is no basis for your morality other than your personal opinion about what is right.
Revenant agrees with this statement, but I think there is an under-appreciated role for empiricism in determining what is objectively wrong or right.
Like all empiric questions, it evolves as what we are able to observe evolves.
I'm not sure who would be a good resource for learning to look at things this way, although I'm inclined to think that Sam Harris might be.
Why is there a general rule against rape, murder, theft, robbery? Why is universal among cultures which have no contact with each other?
It isn't. Not in the way you mean.
All societies have the concepts of rape, murder, and theft. What constitutes rape, murder, and theft differs wildly from society to society, as does the appropriate response to those actions. To cite an obvious example, in some Islamic cultures an appropriate response to rape is to force the rapist and victim to marry. Similarly, killing a person for being an atheist is murder in America and mandated by God's law in Saudi Arabia.
Humans have universal concepts of "this is mine" and a universal desire not to die. So do dogs and cats; so do lots of other animals. That is about as "universal" as human morality gets.
The final solution was a soltuion based on REASON.
Bullshit. Nazi ideology was explicitly anti-rational. And I said "reason and the categorical imperative". As a Hayekian, I'm probably less enamored of pure reason than you, all things being equal, but we're talking morality and ethics here, not economics and politics. In the realm of ethics, all that is needed is properly grounded axioms, good sense, and some logic. The categorical imperative (depends on how you define it, in a neoHayekian sense, this could include all traditional extra-rational externialities, or what have you) provides what reason cannot.
Still and all, God isn't a necessary element of morality, although it provides a useful shortcut for those inclined, like Polybius, to take political shortcuts through the traditional thicket.
You haven't asked in the right way. They either believe in Zeus as a historical-mythic-allegorical construct, or they believe, in the old traditional manner, that Zeus is a demon making mock of the faithful, like Ba'al or Babylon the Great.
I'm not sure if you missed the point or just like being overly literal, but when I said "believes in Zeus" I meant "believes a god named Zeus exists".
By your definition there are no atheists at all, since all atheists believe in the existence of a "historical-mythic-allegorical construct" called "God". Just like we "believe" in unicorns. :)
BTW, about religious people being proponents of slavery - two of the greatest defenders of American slavery, John C. Calhoun and Thomas Jefferson, were both of dubious Christian standing
Anyone who counts Thomas Jefferson as "one of the greatest defenders of American slavery" isn't worth reading further. Honestly, read a book sometime.
Reason can lead you to very amoral or immoral ends.
As opposed to irrationality, which never leads to amoral or immoral ends. :)
I'm not sure if you missed the point or just like being overly literal, but when I said "believes in Zeus" I meant "believes a god named Zeus exists".
Just being pedantic. Although your point does suggest why Pascal's Bet is imbecilic, and unworthy of a great mind - such gambles only can pay off when the choice is binary. A Pascal's bet between the mortal and an infinity of potentially ferocious deities, all equally jealous and equally likely to be nonexistent, is lost money. Might as well make the most of the present. What will all those people who put their money on 17th Century Jesuitical French Catholicism think when that ball falls into the slot of Mithras or "Pure Land" or "Pastafarianism"?
Anyone who counts Thomas Jefferson as "one of the greatest defenders of American slavery" isn't worth reading further. Honestly, read a book sometime.
I did, a while ago: This one, primarily, although there was an article recently about his nail factory which was kind of striking. I am *not* a fan. There were abolitionist founding fathers, but Jefferson was not one of them.
They didn't. A lot of people who were Christian did.
Like St. Paul, for example, who explicitly told Christian slaves they had a duty to obey their masters.
Come on, can we skip the cop-out argument that anybody who didn't follow 21st century Christian theology wasn't a real Christian? Slavery was practiced by Christians from the time of Christ right up through the late 19th century. The Catholic Church endorsed it, every mainstream Protestant church was fine with it -- until very late in the game.
Why didn't the slave system of ancient Rome and Greece perpetuated into the Middle Ages?
Because the Roman empire fell. Roman slavery required constant wars of conquest to bring in new slaves; once Rome became incapable of waging such wars, the system collapsed. Slavery itself continued to be practiced throughout Europe throughout the Middle Ages, although after a half-dozen centuries or so it became illegal to enslave *Christians*.
Revenant wrote:
Reason can lead you to very amoral or immoral ends.
As opposed to irrationality, which never leads to amoral or immoral ends. :)
irrationality leads to evil ends too(though the person engaging in the behavior may be judged as irrational by his peers though his actions may be based on reason on his part). Generally though people aren't up front about how they don't need religion because they can use irrationality instead .
Reason is like Obama saying his gun proposals are based on common sense. How much do you want to bet the fact that he's saying they are based on common sense is because he thinks his view are common sense. When in fact his arguments sound like common nonsense to me. They're subjective values.
If you made your own morality why would you assume it wasnt based on reason or common sense since you believe it?
Generally though people aren't up front about how they don't need religion because they can use irrationality instead
For much the same reason that you seldom hear people say "I'm against alcoholic beverages, so from now on I'm only drinking beer".
Mitch H wrote:
Bullshit. Nazi ideology was explicitly anti-rational.
bullshit, The nazis were explicitly rational. They had cutting edge views on the eugenics of the day, and their view of them as supermen and the Jews as subhuman was tied very much into scientific views of the day, mixed with their,own blend of antisemitism. They were very progressive and extremely rational. I'f they are trying to strengthen the race and weed out weakness and Jews are vermin weakening the race then removing them is a rational decision. Makes perfect sense to me. They were extremely systematic in carrying out their extermination and were not haphazard at all in how they carried out their killing. If we viewed genocide as a positive we'd look to nazis for examples of things to,do to best achieve results.
I don't agree with their ideas or,their proposals , but that doesn't mean it wasn't rational. Being evil is not the same as being irrational. Which again is why its not a good idea to equate morality with reason.
Who doesnt think their ideas are based on reason?
Whether Eric wanted prayer or not is irrelevant.
Yeah, what's relevant is that the priest gets to pee his religion anywhere he wants, like a cat marking his turf.
bullshit, The nazis were explicitly rational.
What a silly thing to say.
Mitch H wrote:
Anyone who counts Thomas Jefferson as "one of the greatest defenders of American slavery" isn't worth reading further. Honestly, read a book sometime.
I did, a while ago: This one, primarily, although there was an article recently about his nail factory which was kind of striking. I am *not* a fan. There were abolitionist founding fathers, but Jefferson was not one of them.
we view the founding fathers as hypocrites because we view the idea of slavery an absolute evil and the right to freedom as an inalienable one because we view those ideas as objectively true. Not subjectively. So if they believed in inalienable rights of freedom, how could they then have slaves? But if our rights are not inalienable and merely based on consensus then there is no reason to hold them to any particularly high standard at all.
So what if they held slaves. Slavery like every other moral consideration is not objectively evil. Rather its just a consensus opinion where a larger percentage of people believe one thing and not another.
This actually puts Lincoln in a far different light by the way, right? Woldnt he be one of the great villains our country ever had? He actually started a war to free slaves, based on the objective morality of slavery being evil and the idea that salary should be abolished(well, that's not the only reason the civil war was fought, but it was one factor).
Only if slavery is only a subjective evil then Lincoln basically started a war not because of any objective truth (we hold these truths to be self evident...) but simply because a consensus of people held an opinion on the subject of slavery based on nothing but their own views and felt the need to impose it on half of the country on pain of death.
Who doesnt think their ideas are based on reason?
Anyone from a philosophical tradition descended from the Romantics, for one. Which Nazism was, explicitly, as was all of the fascist or post-Crisis radical/socialist ideological movements. In point of fact, the left socialists (Communists) and right socialists (fascists et al) can reliably be divided between those who erect a cult of Reason (tracks roughly to the commies & internationalists) and those who erect a cult of Will (tracks roughly to the Nazis, fascists, and other national socialists).
Look up Heidegger, for a more respectable example of what I'm talking about, here, although his partisans would bark at the moon for him to be treated simply as "the Nazi philosopher".
we view the founding fathers as hypocrites because we view the idea of slavery an absolute evil and the right to freedom as an inalienable one because we view those ideas as objectively true. Not subjectively. So if they believed in inalienable rights of freedom, how could they then have slaves?
I didn't call Jefferson a hypocrite, but if I did, it wouldn't be because he talked of freedom and held slaves; it would be because he talked of hating slavery, but never lifted a finger to meliorate the problem, continued investing in slavery throughout his economic life, drove his personal chattel mercilessly, did everything in his political power to expand the physical expression of American slavery, and refused to manumit his slaves after his death, as did others of his generation who were uneasy with the institution. The only American who did more to save American slavery as an institution from an early dissolution was Whitney, and I can't see to blame him the way I blame Jefferson. Seriously, read that Smithsonian article and the book Jefferson's Lost Cause, they're illuminating.
Lincoln[...] He actually started a war to free slaves, based on the objective morality of slavery being evil and the idea that salary should be abolished
The former is utter nonsense, the sort of thing I hope they aren't even teaching in grade school any more. And the latter, about salary being abolished... what the hell do you mean by that? I started off on a tangent about Carl Schurz and misunderstanding the "Free Labor" portion of the Lincolnite Republican platform, and then realized maybe you're just making odd noises in hopes of making us say strange things in response or something....
I think the morality discussion is missing the point. Moral beliefs, at least some of them, are properly basic, we just intuitively see that acts such as rape and murder are wrong.
The problem is not that atheists do not share these moral intuitions. Of course they do. The problem is that the belief that these acts are actually, objectively wrong is very difficult to justify given atheism. And by "very difficult" I mean "impossible."
So the charge is not that atheists are liable to commit such acts, at least more than non-atheists. The charge is that the atheist is being inconsistent in holding that rape and murder are actually, objectively wrong. Such beliefs are incompatible with atheism.
Many thoughtful comments here. I thank the guy who posted "Let the Mystery Be" which expresses my thoughts on the subject and frames them in a catchy melody......It is a value judgement--and, in my estimation, a mistaken one--to arbitrarily define Hitler as a greater villian than Mao. But that's the ethos of our time. Nazis are evil and Communists are failed idealists. In Lincoln's time, sensible men argued that slavery was a kind of sheltered workshop for Africans and that the wage slaves of the north were the truly oppressed. During the potatoe blight, one out of seven people in Ireland starved to death. It is now our judgement that slavery is a worse fate than starvation, but, nowadays, we are neither slaves nor hungry so we have different values.....People are usually about as good as they can afford to be. The affluence of our age allows us to be better people. We can afford to be atheists.
The problem is that the belief that these acts are actually, objectively wrong is very difficult to justify given atheism. And by "very difficult" I mean "impossible."
If it is impossible for atheists to justify the existence of objective morality, it is impossible for theists to justify it. After all, divine will is no more "objective" than human will is. Almost all religions have stories of their deity or deities changing his or her mind about something, often in response to human actions.
But in any case you're wrong that it is impossible to have an atheistic objective morality.
For example, it turns out -- unsurprisingly -- that behaviors humans widely consider "immoral" are also terrible ideas from a person and species-survival standpoint. Evolutionary forces were jointly promoting the concepts of "do unto others" and "an eye for an eye" while humans were still trying to figure out the whole "walking on two legs" thing.
If the universe itself is structured in such a way that certain behaviors are eliminated and others are rewarded, that's a solid basis for a system of objective morality, wouldn't you say? Certainly better than trying to figure out what a 2500 year old English translation of a Latin translation of an Aramaic book claimed God said was objective morality, anyhoo.
"After all, I've never met a Christian who believes in Zeus."
Belief is far more complicated than that. One can believe in Zeus in one form or another, and simply choose to worship God rather than Zeus.
For the record, I'm aware of at least one atheist who is also a polytheist pagan: Eric S Raymond, who even has an essay describing how he became a pagan online.
I'm aware of at least one atheist who is also a polytheist pagan
As a result of this, I am aware of at least one polytheist pagan who doesn't own a dictionary.
Yes. What a rational thing for the Nazis to try a do-over of WWI. Incredibly rational. Who wouldn't want to try such an exquisite disaster over again?
Amazing what lengths people will go to in order to make a desperately stupid (but ideologically nourishing) point.
Actually, the Nazis weren't just trying to re-litigate WWI, but something on a much grander scale.
Rational!
A ground invasion of the Russian front in winter.
Rational!
An army of kids defending Berlin.
Rational!
"I was searching frantically for anything that would help me get through this... But everything I found had to do with God: putting your faith in God, believing that God had some sort of plan. I found nothing to help me."
An atheist should find a way to help herself. Who else has any reason to? Is that what she's getting at?
If it is impossible for atheists to justify the existence of objective morality, it is impossible for theists to justify it.
Morality is grounded in God's nature. God is the ground of reality. The ground of morality is thus the ground of reality. As such, moral claims can be objective.
Morality is grounded in God's nature. God is the ground of reality. The ground of morality is thus the ground of reality. As such, moral claims can be objective.
Now replace "God" with "the natural world" and you have an equally valid atheistic objective morality.
Rev, I fear that any definition of "the natural world" which admits of an absolute moral axiomatic basis skirts perilously close to a Platonic definition of "God". Not that I think that there is moral axiomatic basis in "the natural world" as you do - morality, at final analysis, isn't a materially necessary or even very natural construction. It must be... some combination of human nature (IE, the Kantian categorical imperative) and deep history (Hayek's "tradition" or non-instinct, non-rational permeating third force). Emergent, in a deeply non-evolutionary sense.
Sometimes I think of God itself as emergent, the idea of morality formed from the material. Not the devil in the details, but God *of* the details, not "God of the gaps", but God in the closing the gaps, until the gaps are close enough and something... sparks. And opens His eyes for the first time.
Jim S. said...
If it is impossible for atheists to justify the existence of objective morality, it is impossible for theists to justify it.
Either way, in the end, the jokes on you.
Dying and grieving atheists who've declared themselves a "heavenly flight risk" should never be surprised by steeper "bail".
Since I pissed off a few early on this thread, let me continue...I do try hard.
Carol Fiore cited on NPR ...
"Then I found out they had given him his last rites," she says.
That wasn't a surprise, since Via Christi is a Catholic hospital. But even after Fiore announced that Eric would not want anyone praying for him, a priest hovered and prayed, day after day. Finally, she kicked the priest out.
I wanted to call bullshit on that early on but hesitated until I could talk to some life long Catholics, clergy included. I am also awaiting a return call from the largest Catholic Hospital in my area at this time.
I call Fiore's allegation bullshit because I can find no one, including among priests, who has ever heard of "last rites" (other wise known as "Anointing of the Sick" since the 1970's, as well as "Penance" and "Viaticum")...actually three separate "sacraments" ... that assert these sacraments are given to non-Catholics who are conscious (which Fiore purports Eric was) by priests in Catholic hospitals.
From what I've learned so far: "Anointing of the Sick" is not reserved for the dying and is mistaken as "last rites" by many ill informed when "last rites" includes the three sacraments cited above...the other two are essentially confession and acceptance of the Eucharist (that tasteless cookie thing).
However, the main thing is that I can find no one, including among Priests, who confirms that Priests provide these rites to non-catholics as de rigueur practice, especially if conscious and communicative, nor have they heard of Priests "hovering over patients" praying in Catholic hospitals, now or 12 years ago either.
I still think Mz Fiore is hyping a book. And herself. Period.
Rev, I fear that any definition of "the natural world" which admits of an absolute moral axiomatic basis skirts perilously close to a Platonic definition of "God"
No, not at all. Gods are sentient; the universe isn't.
Either way, in the end, the jokes on you.
I've joked before that the main downside to thinking there's no afterlife is that you can't look forward to saying "I told you so" when it turns out you were right.
No, not at all. Gods are sentient; the universe isn't.
I'm not sure that's a necessary condition for divinity. Shinto seems to operate with divine objects without practitioners insisting on the sentience of the revered objects. Trees, for instance, and much-used tools.
I don't think Gaia-worshippers universally insist that the worshiped earth is itself a personified ego. And a lot of the ontological proofs - like Godel's, for instance - don't seem to even touch on the subjects of sentience, personality, or personhood.
I'm not sure that's a necessary condition for divinity. Shinto seems to operate with divine objects without practitioners insisting on the sentience of the revered objects. Trees, for instance, and much-used tools.
That's why it is a bad idea to translate "kami" as "god". Some kami are gods, others aren't.
O Ritmo wrote:
Yes. What a rational thing for the Nazis to try a do-over of WWI. Incredibly rational. Who wouldn't want to try such an exquisite disaster over again?
Amazing what lengths people will go to in order to make a desperately stupid (but ideologically nourishing) point.
you're confusing the idea that I agree or disagree with the programs as to whether they are rational or not. Rational doesn't just mean it works or is right. For example how many scientists believed things in the past that turned out to be false. Does that mean try weren't rational?
Was believing in Jews as a mongrel race and waging war with the world and killing six million people a good thing? Hell no. But was it a rational thing? Of course. To them it was rational. If they had won thus be writing the history books. Even a stupid idea is based on reason (ie nazis going into Russia). It may ultimately be a stupid idea.
Communism is a stupid idea. Those promoting it can put forth all sorts of reasons why it does
Work all based on reason. They're just
Wrong. Reason is very often a subjective thing
Revenant wrote:
Now replace "God" with "the natural world" and you have an equally valid atheistic objective morality.
where are you getting say its wrong to kill from
The natural world. If you watch any nature show
You know that isn't true.
Now replace "God" with "the natural world" and you have an equally valid atheistic objective morality.
The natural world is constantly changing. Or in philosophical terms, it's contingent. That's why it can't function as the ground of reality. What is needed is something that is unchanging. Otherwise moral claims, such as do not murder or rape, are subject to change when the ground changes. The claim of theism is that morality is grounded in God's unchanging nature. There is no comparable claim for atheism.
The claim of theism is that morality is grounded in God's unchanging nature
Your argument is, in short:
X is unchanging.
Y is grounded in X
Therefore, Y is unchanging.
Here's the obvious problem: change happens. You yourself concede this.
Thus there are four possibilities, at least one of which must logically be true:
1. God changes on a regular basis.
2. The world you see around you isn't grounded in God.
3. Change doesn't actually happen, you just think it does.
4. Your argument is wrong, and it is possible for constant change to be grounded in an unchanging base.
If 1 or 2 is true then God doesn't serve as the basis for objective morality. If 3 is true then your objection to the natural world serving as a basis for morality is wrong. If 4 is true then you can't trust that morality is unchanging just because it is based in an unchanging God.
Also, 4 is correct; physics has proven it. :)
But in any case, you misunderstood what "the natural world" refers to. I'm referring to the whole of existence itself, not to planet Earth. Change occurs within the whole of existence, but the underlying principles do not appear to change.
Of course it's possible for a constantly changing world to be grounded in an unchanging ground. Why wouldn't it be?
Your argument is, in short:
X is unchanging.
Y is grounded in X
Therefore, Y is unchanging.
You got it backwards. I'm not arguing from God's nature to morality, I'm arguing from morality to God's nature. I'm saying:
If Y is unchanging, it must have an unchanging ground: X.
Y is unchanging.
Therefore, X.
It doesn't follow from this that everything that is grounded in X shares the attribute of being unchanging. It just means that for those things that don't share that attribute, we couldn't make this particular argument. But I'm not making this particular argument for those things.
Now you can easily reject the argument by just rejecting the second premise, that there are objective moral truths. But the comments above were whether atheists really believe that rape, e.g., is wrong. I argued that they do really believe this, but that it is inconsistent with their atheism. But if you honestly don't think there's anything morally wrong with rape or the other atrocities mentioned, then my argument is not addressed to you.
Also, re: your claim that the underlying principles do not change. Above, I equated change with contingency, but that's sloppy. Contingency means anything that could fail to be. The laws of logic and mathematics are not contingent, because they are true of all possible worlds. The laws of physics are contingent because they are not true of all possible worlds. That is, the fine structure constant could have been different. Whether they actually change in the world we experience is not enough to render them non-contingent.
Change occurs within the whole of existence, but the underlying principles do not appear to change.
If you believe in underlying unchanging eternal principles, I hate to break it to you, but you're a theist. That's a ontologically defined God. As I said before, personality and sentience doesn't enter into it.
Me, I'm not sold on the concept. If you could run a billion Big Bangs and get the universe as she is a billion times? Then yes, we have here a set of underlying eternal principles, fated by the inherent verities to produce physicalities, materialities, powers and principalities in their serried ranks like the angelic choruses each in their appointed places.
But if this is one in a billion creations of blind random happenstance? Then there is no underlying eternal principle, but rather the product of a undirected collapse of the quantum foam, a chance universe here to be experienced because its incidental unfolding happened to be such that we occurred to experience the results of our occurrence.
No, I prefer to rely on emergent morality, tradition, and the rational interpretation and integration of experience in our ethical constructs. Don't call it relativism, because there is nothing to relate but the deep experience of man collective and individual. Absolute moralities are hard, rigid, and easily shattered when taken at the wrong angle. Tradition and experience is resilient, flexible, granular and not easily moved beyond small incremental accommodations.
If Y is unchanging, it must have an unchanging ground: X.
If God is unchanging, it must have an unchanging ground: X
And there's the problem with your argument, of course. Morality can skip over "God" and just be based in X, cutting out the middle man.
Now, at this point there are a few approaches theists usually take.
The first is special pleading, usually something along the lines of "oh, well GOD doesn't have to be based in anything, but everything else does". This is the logical fallacy colloquially known as "just making shit up to win the argument". :)
The second is to say "well, God is based in Himself". But of course once we establish that things can be based in nothing but themselves, the need of objective morality to have any basis BUT itself vanishes.
The third is to punt, and say that God is based in truth or love or whatever. But of course that just begs the question of what THOSE things are based in.
What the world shows us is that there are unchanging truths which don't appear to NEED a cause. For example, the fact that one plus one equals two appears to be unchanging, but doesn't appear to be based in anything. What's strange is that you yourself admit this by asserting that logic is unchanging (that isn't provably true, by the way).
The laws of physics are contingent because they are not true of all possible worlds.
I guess it is a good thing I didn't say atheistic morality was based on the laws of physics, then. :)
If you believe in underlying unchanging eternal principles, I hate to break it to you, but you're a theist
If you believe that belief in unchanging eternal principles makes you a theist then I hate to break it to you but you're illiterate. :)
Now, have some theists claimed that any unchanging eternal principle = God? Sure. There's pretty much nothing some theist hasn't claimed was God. Heck, the Son of Sam thought a dog was god. I believe the dog really existed -- holy shit, I'm a theist.
Honestly, I'm bored with you making banal and inaccurate comments about subjects you don't understand. You're well out of your depth; I'll be ignoring you in the future. :)
The first is special pleading, usually something along the lines of "oh, well GOD doesn't have to be based in anything, but everything else does". This is the logical fallacy colloquially known as "just making shit up to win the argument". :)
The actual philosophical term is infinite regress. If everything must be based on something else, which must be based on something else, etc., you end up with an infinite regress of bases. In this case, none can function as an actual base, because each step only functions as a base derivatively, i.e. it obtains its properties by virtue of something else. In order to avoid this, you have to posit a stopping-point, an end to the regression. Appealing to this stopping-point is not special pleading, since it is derived from the rejection of an infinite regress.
The second is to say "well, God is based in Himself". But of course once we establish that things can be based in nothing but themselves, the need of objective morality to have any basis BUT itself vanishes.
Well, either those theists misunderstood Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason or you misunderstood them. Leibniz asked why there is something rather than nothing and concluded that everything must have a sufficient reason for its existence. For many things, this reason is (or could be) whatever caused it, but "cause" and "reason" are not synonymous. He concluded that, in order to avoid the dreaded infinite regress, there must be something that is its own sufficient reason, in short that it could not fail to exist. It could not be contingent. Whether you agree with Leibniz and his commentators or not is beside the point. The universe cannot be its own sufficient reason because, once again, it's contingent.
But it seems there are aspects of our universe (such as logic, math, and some moral claims) that are not contingent. If it's possible for there to be something non-contingent that is its own sufficient reason, why can't these things be their own sufficient reason? Essentially, this is Platonism, and while it's possible to be an atheist Platonist, there would be a lot of tension in holding both views together. Plato tried to unite all of the forms into an overarching form, but it's difficult to make sense of without an ultimate mind, the forms being the thoughts of this ultimate mind. I think the best reason to hold that these eternal truths cannot be their own ground is simply to appeal to Ockham's Razor. If you can explain the same thing with one entity (an ultimate mind) that would otherwise require an infinite number of forms, we should prefer the former alternative.
As such, I'm puzzled by your statement, For example, the fact that one plus one equals two appears to be unchanging, but doesn't appear to be based in anything. How does it "not appear to be based in anything"? If it's not based in anything, why believe it?
You go on to write, What's strange is that you yourself admit this by asserting that logic is unchanging (that isn't provably true, by the way). Any and all proofs use the laws of logic. Therefore, any attempt to disprove the laws of logic would be self-refuting, and any attempt to prove them would be circular. And at any rate, Kurt Gödel proved that truth is more than provability.
Fiore's daughter Robin, a student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, plans to go on to graduate school in science. She says she sees her father's genetic influence in herself and in her sister.
"As an ecologist and as a scientist, we believe that when you die, your energy becomes part of a system again," Robin says. "So there is a sense that he's part of a system again. And in that way, I guess, people can never really be gone."
Ah, is this symbolic transubstantiation or consubtantiation?
There are milions of atheist in the USA and world wide, yet they won't suffer for their morality by establishing a atheist hospital system of their own, using only their funds.
Such as:
The Hitchens Throat Cancer Hospital and Research Institute.
Richard Branson HIV Institute of Research.
Whoops, first he needs to found;
Branson Pilot Burn Hospital/Worlwide.
Then this poor victim can truly suffer for her morality based on atheism, and can direct her self- pity to other atheist while he becomes "other energy".
If I was a atheist, I wouldn't have ended up at a Catholic hospital pissing on them, while they tryed to save his self-inflicted burns.
But, things will get better for her as soon as she gets psychotherapy that can stop the overproduction of her molecules of despair/grief.
Oh ,
Xipe Totec, bring rorate caeli to this atheist and quench the narcissism of this Rachel. Whose fellow atheist lack the "bright" to establish their own burn ward, where energy shall be transubstanstiated.
1/18/13, 4:12 AM
Honestly, I'm bored with you making banal and inaccurate comments about subjects you don't understand. You're well out of your depth; I'll be ignoring you in the future.
Wow, it's important to you to *know*, isn't it? Your favorite ad hominem is "you know nothing, Jon Snow"!
I'm willing to be wrong, if it be fruitful. More is learned from an error discovered, than a million verities unexamined. But the theology of atheism is scientism, the abuse of science as an esoteric doctrine of faith. And your gassing on about eternal natural principles - which aren't physics, since that's been demonstrated to be contingent of the first seconds of creation, and aren't defined by you, and probably can't, because all other principles are derived, in the end, from those of physics, quantum or otherwise.
Any rate, we're talking axioms of morality here, and morality isn't derivable from the Planck or Hubble constants, although I was just reading a SF book which had aliens who claimed to derive an entire moral-social-economic-political unified system from principles of system energy balance.
No, if morality is derived naturally, from inherent principles, those principles are first neurological and biological, and transformed into ethics, modified by environment and local conditions. Are you claiming that neurology and biology are *constant*? I can't think of an argument more foolish on the cusp of some great unknown technological change, whether it be evolutionary, or the "rapture of the nerds", biotechnological Singularity complete with angels bearing burning swords! Even today, we dope children to an inch of their biochemical lives in order to build Brave New Daycare.
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