kurt vonnegut said:

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BluHorseShu said:

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As the author John C. Wright noted " Merely because it happens to be a scientific fact that human beings have such-and-such an instinct or such-and-such a behavior, this creates no necessary moral obligation, in itself, to follow rather than fight that instinct. You cannot deduce an "ought" from an "is".

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Can an "ought" statement be justified by a religious belief that cannot be demonstrated, proven, or questioned?

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Well, I believe the point is that their must be something beyond ourselves. The ethical rules of the universe cannot come from natural law so their must be a super human lawgiver that gives us the innate sense of things. Otherwise man could naturally move beyond the compulsion to follow them since their is no judge or supreme authority

Define good rules?

It never ends.

No objective morality needs to be demonstrated because it is axiomatic. No one can demonstrate the existence of an actual universe, and you don't ask anyone to do so. You just accept it because you axiomatically know it to be so. I don't have to demonstrate that the shooting of school children in Uvalde was evil. You axiomatically know that to be so as well. You may give lip-service to the idea that you don't objectively know it, that it is a subjective feeling, but, in reality, you know that argument is nonsense. The shooting is simply evil. No one needs to be convinced of that via propositional arguments.

Euthyphro's dilemma is a false dilemma. If all existence is grounded in God, and God's nature is good, then the dilemma goes away. It is not a weak argument. It is just one you don't like.

Zobel said:

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Define good rules?

It never ends.

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I was speaking of Rules that judged from a subjective framework outside your own subjective framework are still deemed worth having.

In short something upon which we might agree even if for different reasons

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No objective morality needs to be demonstrated because it is axiomatic. No one can demonstrate the existence of an actual universe, and you don't ask anyone to do so. You just accept it because you axiomatically know it to be so. I don't have to demonstrate that the shooting of school children in Uvalde was evil. You axiomatically know that to be so as well. You may give lip-service to the idea that you don't objectively know it, that it is a subjective feeling, but, in reality, you know that argument is nonsense. The shooting is simply evil. No one needs to be convinced of that via propositional arguments.

Euthyphro's dilemma is a false dilemma. If all existence is grounded in God, and God's nature is good, then the dilemma goes away. It is not a weak argument. It is just one you don't like.

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Believing in objective morality axiomatically is silly. It's not demanded. Believing in the universe or other people or the basic reliability of the senses ect. Is required to prevent reverting to a silly solipsism.

Assuming objective morality exists is assuming something very likely to be untrue.

The dilemma doesn't go away for anyone actually thinking about the question and not just hand waving. You have simply claimed gods nature is good- no different than divine command theory really. Who judges gods nature as good? Himself? Well that's just a silly loop back to divine command and arbitrary morality as the nature of anything that could create a universe regardless of that nature becomes good. Or you loop back to an outside judge of gods nature, which is no less problematic than an outside judge of gods commands. You haven't answered the question.

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Believing in objective morality axiomatically is silly. It's not demanded. Believing in the universe or other people or the basic reliability of the senses ect. Is required to prevent reverting to a silly solipsism.

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Nothing is demanded in the sense you mean. Sure, it would be destructive to live life as a solipsist, but it would also be destructive if we lived as though morality truly were subjective.

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Assuming objective morality exists is assuming something very likely to be untrue.

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Yet every sane person believes the Uvalde shooting was evil. Likely to be untrue by what standard? This is nonsense and in no way consistent with our shared reality and the human experience.

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The dilemma doesn't go away for anyone actually thinking about the question and not just hand waving. You have simply claimed gods nature is good- no different than divine command theory really. Who judges gods nature as good? Himself? Well that's just a silly loop back to divine command and arbitrary morality as the nature of anything that could create a universe regardless of that nature becomes good. Or you loop back to an outside judge of gods nature, which is no less problematic than an outside judge of gods commands. You haven't answered the question.

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No one judges it as good. That is like asking who created God. I don't mean this to be rude, as I know you claim to have once been a believer, but this paragraph demonstrates a deficient understanding of the Christian God. He is the cause of all existence. Any being, other than God, capable of creating a universe, would still be caused by God and would be subject to the same standard of good as any other being created by God. There is no loop. It all stems from and grows out from God, the basis and source of all existence. You seem to have the idea that there could be a rival or alternate god who is not subject to the same standard. That is not the case. If that scenario were possible, then by definition, the Christian God does not exist. This then becomes merely an argument about whether or not the Christian God exists and not one about the nature of good.

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Nothing is demanded in the sense you mean. Sure, it would be destructive to live life as a solipsist, but it would also be destructive if we lived as though morality truly were subjective

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It really wouldn't though. And even in some alternate timeline where it did actually limit your ability to adhere to a moral standard, it still doesn't at all mean it's true. That's not well reasoned.

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Yet every sane person believes the Uvalde shooting was evil.

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Agreement has nothing to due with what makes something objective or not. That you are appealing to a collective opinion doesn't make it any less opinion.

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Likely to be untrue by what standard?

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Our sense of morality judged through a historical lense is very clearly something that is time and culture specific and ever evolving.

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This is nonsense and in no way consistent with our shared reality and the human experience.

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No what is nonsense is the notion that anyone has any access to anything remotely resembling an objective morality. Which is why no matter how long we talk about this you will never once have anything to lean on that is truly objective. The universe doesn't come pre-packaged with a moral system. There is no argument that will be sound all the way back to basic presuppositions like the reliability of our senses like for other objective facts. Not even close.

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No one judges it as good.

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You just claimed it as good. By what objective standard are you claiming god's nature is good in order to try an circumvent the argument? I do hope you aren't trying to presuppose such a thing and consider that your argument?

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That is like asking who created God.

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It's not even remotely the same. You can claim god has always existed and so it doesn't logically apply. You can't claim god is good without demonstrating a why you objectively claim to know this when trying to circumvent a logical dilemma of how we know what is objectively good.

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I don't mean this to be rude, as I know you claim to have once been a believer, but this paragraph demonstrates a deficient understanding of the Christian God.

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That paragraph doesn't just apply to the Christian god, Euthypro's dilemma applies to any and all gods. Including those much more likely to actually exist that the god of Christianity.

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He is the cause of all existence. Any being, other than God, capable of creating a universe, would still be caused by God and would be subject to the same standard of good as any other being created by God.

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Whether you count all existence as this universe or have a pantheon of gods or one god it makes no difference. For whatever god you consider at the top of the god food chain, provided they are powerful enough to be at the top of the god food chain can have any other non-essential characteristics and you would be still deem that god good therefore making good as you've defined it arbitrary. You are stuck in the same loop.

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It all stems from and grows out from God, the basis and source of all existence.

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That doesn't make something good. It just makes something the result of god. I'm not sure why you think they must be linked.

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You seem to have the idea that there could be a rival or alternate god who is not subject to the same standard.

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No I'm saying that the characteristics of god are not fixed by logic. There is nothing logically unsound about a god with different moral views than the Christian or Muslim or you name it god that still managed to create anything and everything.

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That is not the case. If that scenario were possible, then by definition, the Christian God does not exist. This then becomes merely an argument about whether or not the Christian God exists and not one about the nature of good.

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This is quite absurd and has nothing to do with any logical argument. You are basically saying I'm presupposing my god exists and presupposing he's by his nature the source of all good. Therefore I've dealt with Euthyphro's dilemma by never actually thinking about it and presupposing the answer.

Euthyphros Dilemma is about how we can KNOW good, not about what we can presuppose. We can presuppose anything untrue. Euthypro's Dilemma is about challenging the presupposition of god's goodness, simply stating the presupposition isn't actually a counterargument.

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Nothing is demanded in the sense you mean. Sure, it would be destructive to live life as a solipsist, but it would also be destructive if we lived as though morality truly were subjective

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It really wouldn't though. And even in some alternate timeline where it did actually limit your ability to adhere to a moral standard, it still doesn't at all mean it's true. That's not well reasoned.

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Of course it doesn't mean it is true. Neither does the destructive nature of solipsism mean it is not true. I didn't reason that way. I simply pushed back against your assertion that belief in axiomatic objective morality is silly because it isn't demanded. Nothing is demanded in that sense.

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Yet every sane person believes the Uvalde shooting was evil.

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Agreement has nothing to due with what makes something objective or not. That you are appealing to a collective opinion doesn't make it any less opinion.

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I believe in trees. When I am conceptualizing a tree in my mind, I think of a trunk, branches, twigs, and leaves. When I hear and read others describe trees in ways similar to my understanding, I am confident that my idea of a tree is consistent with some reality. If everyone else were to describe trees in ways completely foreign to my understanding, I would begin to question whether or not I actually had the right idea about trees.

Similarly, I believe in good and evil. When I hear and read others describe good and evil in ways similar to my understanding, I am confident that my idea of good and evil is consistent with some reality. If everyone else were to describe good and evil in ways completely foreign to my understanding, I would begin to question whether or not I actually had the right idea about good and evil.

If the premise is that morality is axiomatic and imbedded within us, then we would expect to see collective opinions as evidence of it.

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Likely to be untrue by what standard?

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Our sense of morality judged through a historical lense is very clearly something that is time and culture specific and ever evolving.

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I don't think your assertion is clear at all. I believe there is remarkable consistency throughout time and throughout cultures of the basic moral principles. Certainly how they are applied has changed greatly over time and place, but I believe the basic principles endure.

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This is nonsense and in no way consistent with our shared reality and the human experience.

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No what is nonsense is the notion that anyone has any access to anything remotely resembling an objective morality. Which is why no matter how long we talk about this you will never once have anything to lean on that is truly objective. The universe doesn't come pre-packaged with a moral system. There is no argument that will be sound all the way back to basic presuppositions like the reliability of our senses like for other objective facts. Not even close.

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Why would I be confident that my sense of vision provides access to an objective reality but think that my sense of right and wrong does not?

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No one judges it as good.

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You just claimed it as good. By what objective standard are you claiming god's nature is good in order to try an circumvent the argument? I do hope you aren't trying to presuppose such a thing and consider that your argument?

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That is like asking who created God.

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It's not even remotely the same. You can claim god has always existed and so it doesn't logically apply. You can't claim god is good without demonstrating a why you objectively claim to know this when trying to circumvent a logical dilemma of how we know what is objectively good.

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I don't mean this to be rude, as I know you claim to have once been a believer, but this paragraph demonstrates a deficient understanding of the Christian God.

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That paragraph doesn't just apply to the Christian god, Euthypro's dilemma applies to any and all gods. Including those much more likely to actually exist that the god of Christianity.

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He is the cause of all existence. Any being, other than God, capable of creating a universe, would still be caused by God and would be subject to the same standard of good as any other being created by God.

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Whether you count all existence as this universe or have a pantheon of gods or one god it makes no difference. For whatever god you consider at the top of the god food chain, provided they are powerful enough to be at the top of the god food chain can have any other non-essential characteristics and you would be still deem that god good therefore making good as you've defined it arbitrary. You are stuck in the same loop.

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It all stems from and grows out from God, the basis and source of all existence.

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That doesn't make something good. It just makes something the result of god. I'm not sure why you think they must be linked.

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You seem to have the idea that there could be a rival or alternate god who is not subject to the same standard.

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No I'm saying that the characteristics of god are not fixed by logic. There is nothing logically unsound about a god with different moral views than the Christian or Muslim or you name it god that still managed to create anything and everything.

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That is not the case. If that scenario were possible, then by definition, the Christian God does not exist. This then becomes merely an argument about whether or not the Christian God exists and not one about the nature of good.

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This is quite absurd and has nothing to do with any logical argument. You are basically saying I'm presupposing my god exists and presupposing he's by his nature the source of all good. Therefore I've dealt with Euthyphro's dilemma by never actually thinking about it and presupposing the answer.

Euthyphros Dilemma is about how we can KNOW good, not about what we can presuppose. We can presuppose anything untrue. Euthypro's Dilemma is about challenging the presupposition of god's goodness, simply stating the presupposition isn't actually a counterargument.

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For the purposes of this discussion, I am absolutely presupposing the God revealed in the Hebrew and New Testament scriptures exists. That is the God in which I believe and the God under consideration for my part of the discussion with respect to the validity of Euthyphro's dilemma. If those terms are unacceptable, then, as I said, this just becomes another argument about whether or not God exists.

As I understand the dilemma, the first horn is the idea that the good is simply a function of God's whim and power. God likes these things, and he has the power to declare them good. Good is therefore arbitrary. The second horn presents a good grounded in some standard external to God, to which he then conforms himself. Good is therefore above and apart from God.

It seems to me that a third option is for good to be grounded in God himself. This clearly avoids the second horn. I believe it also avoids the first since good would not subject to whim or change as God and his nature are immutable. The question of whether a thing is good because God loves it, or if he loves it because it is good becomes nonsensical when both love and good are grounded in God. There can be no temporal or causative relationship between the two.

We come to know good via God's revelation. He has revealed it to us via our moral intuition and via his written revelation.

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Analogies are always limited, but the thing I was trying to get at was - even if we take a purely secular view of Christian morality and limit it to a kind of structure or system, going at it willy-nilly and changing things "because I don't agree with that" is a bad way to do it.

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Agreed, but I don't think that secularists willy nilly choose what to believe.

Speaking for myself only here: If I compare what I believe today versus what I believed when I was religious, I will find that many of the moral conclusions I arrive at are similar. Killing is bad, stealing is bad, etc. The method by which I arrive at 'killing is bad, stealing is bad, etc. ' is very different. The presuppositions are different. The reasons for why 'x' is bad are different. The criteria on which I evaluate moral claims are different.

I think it is a mistake to assume that secularists are taking Christian moral theology and picking parts and pieces out as they see fit. The whole structure has been replaced. The mechanisms for evaluating morality have changed. This is not comparable to someone plucking out Art 1 Sec 1 of the Constitution and leaving the remainder to stand on its own. The whole foundation has been replaced.

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I can't see any possible argument that the Protestant Reformation (or the Great Schism that preceded it) made for a more stable Christianity.

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You don't have to. The billion or so non Catholic Christians obviously see the split from The Church as something 'positive'. You don't have to agree with them.

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People on the conservative (not political, but moral / social) see that it's like playing jenga. You can't do the game forever. Jordan Peterson and others like him are sounding this warning, and they're not coming at it from a Christian perspective. Eventually this path leads to a fracture, the center cannot hold against the fringe forever as long as you continually deny the premise.

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I am fine with arguments about social stability from a conservative perspective. I don't think this applies to you, but I think much of the objections to progressive agenda items are simply resistance to change. Like you said, maybe those concerns are largely not communicated well enough. Also, there have been times of massive social upheaval and change in this country in the past. And during those times, I think you saw similar arguments and concerns of social disorder from the conservative voices at the time.

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Yes, you absolutely do. People who inherit a system have some baseline obligation to the system. . . . At the minimum what I would like people like you to do, what I feel you are obligated to do, is understand the framework that you are working within. You can't do anything about that, you didn't get to choose. But it's the same baseline expectation we have for citizens in the US. Call it the moral version of civic virtue; its the basic functional requirement for a citizen.

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All of that is fine. But this should not serve as insulation for that framework against criticism. The current fad on this board is to scoff at anyone who speaks critically about a Christian idea and to discount their position as coming from unaware hypocritical beneficiaries of Christian moral progress.

BluHorseShu said:

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kurt vonnegut said:

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BluHorseShu said:

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As the author John C. Wright noted " Merely because it happens to be a scientific fact that human beings have such-and-such an instinct or such-and-such a behavior, this creates no necessary moral obligation, in itself, to follow rather than fight that instinct. You cannot deduce an "ought" from an "is".

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Can an "ought" statement be justified by a religious belief that cannot be demonstrated, proven, or questioned?

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Well, I believe the point is that their must be something beyond ourselves. The ethical rules of the universe cannot come from natural law so their must be a super human lawgiver that gives us the innate sense of things. Otherwise man could naturally move beyond the compulsion to follow them since their is no judge or supreme authority

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This response, as interpreted as a statement of your belief, is all fine. I don't share that belief, but I can understand it and respect the position.

This response, as interpreted as a factual declaration of how the universe MUST operate, is nonsense. Ignorance and humility should prevent us from telling the universe what it MUST be and what it CANNOT do. At least that is my opinion.

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Agreed, but I don't think that secularists willy nilly choose what to believe.

Speaking for myself only here: If I compare what I believe today versus what I believed when I was religious, I will find that many of the moral conclusions I arrive at are similar. Killing is bad, stealing is bad, etc. The method by which I arrive at 'killing is bad, stealing is bad, etc. ' is very different. The presuppositions are different. The reasons for why 'x' is bad are different. The criteria on which I evaluate moral claims are different.

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And yet when you are pressed there's never a structure. Or at least no one has ever been able to explain it to me. It's a big edifice that's been lifted like a pier and beam house, except now it's fixed firmly in the air - you're telling me that the Christian foundation is gone. What replaced it? What prevents the next person over who is more progressive than you (who will always be there) from continuing your game of part removal and replacement?

This is the objection. When it comes down to a moral claim, all of the methods for inquiring as to what is good assume a common understanding of good, but at best without an external criterion of Good you end up with individual opinions, singular or aggregated.

In other words - why should I or anyone or even you trust the reasons you arrive at "killing is bad"? You're just cribbing off of Christianity - you don't actually have anything different to say, and the places where you arrive at differences you borrow words from the Christian foundation (goodness, justice, love) that you already rejected. What is self-evident to a modern secular Westerner was not in a pre-Christian society. Again, post turtle.

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I think it is a mistake to assume that secularists are taking Christian moral theology and picking parts and pieces out as they see fit. The whole structure has been replaced. The mechanisms for evaluating morality have changed. This is not comparable to someone plucking out Art 1 Sec 1 of the Constitution and leaving the remainder to stand on its own. The whole foundation has been replaced.

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This actually made me laugh out loud. good one.

But seriously what did they replace the structure with? What mechanism are you using to evaluate morality?

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You don't have to. The billion or so non Catholic Christians obviously see the split from The Church as something 'positive'. You don't have to agree with them.

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That's not what you asked. You asked it if made a more stable religion. The answer is no.

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I am fine with arguments about social stability from a conservative perspective. I don't think this applies to you, but I think much of the objections to progressive agenda items are simply resistance to change. Like you said, maybe those concerns are largely not communicated well enough. Also, there have been times of massive social upheaval and change in this country in the past. And during those times, I think you saw similar arguments and concerns of social disorder from the conservative voices at the time.

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I think there's a difference in quality between the previous periods and now. Postmodernism is different. There really hasn't been a previous groundswell level of questioning the premise of Western Civilization before.

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All of that is fine. But this should not serve as insulation for that framework against criticism. The current fad on this board is to scoff at anyone who speaks critically about a Christian idea and to discount their position as coming from unaware hypocritical beneficiaries of Christian moral progress.

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ok? this is like that old joke where the man tells God he can create, and says "you see, first you start with a little dirt--" and God interrupts him saying "get your own dirt." If you want to criticize, get your own framework. Using our own concepts of goodness, justice, and love against us is hypocritical at best, ignorant at worst.

St Maximos the Confessor says "Many have said much about love, but you will find love itself only if you seek it among the disciples of Christ. For only they have true Love as love's teacher." The sentiment you're reacting to is the same. The problem is, as I see it, something like a fool arguing with a mechanic and an engineer about removing a piece from an engine. The fool complains that the mechanic can't use his experience as a framework against criticism that the engine might be better, and also freely argues with the engineer about engine performance with no understanding of thermodynamics and indeed rejecting the very idea of the laws of thermodynamics as outmoded. "It's not that I arrive at different principles - efficiency is good, horsepower is good. It's that the presuppositions are different. The criteria on which I evaluate engine performance is different."


What possible response can you give to that than - "ok. explain it."?

This is a very old debate.

To me, the atheists are the other people in the cave, but I realize some would probably take offense at that. They have their worldview/idea of morality, and will not be moved/see it as silly to think otherwise.

As Euripides noted:

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If you bring novel wisdom to fools, you will be regarded as useless, not wise; and if the city regards you as greater than those with a reputation for cleverness, you will be thought vexatious. I myself am a sharer in this lot.

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Hume and Moore had a lot to say about the metaethics issues posed in the Euthyphro dilemma.

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You don't have to. The billion or so non Catholic Christians obviously see the split from The Church as something 'positive'. You don't have to agree with them.

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That's not what you asked. You asked it if made a more stable religion. The answer is no.

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Also - this is just the whole conversation repeated in fractal form. I say this is trend is destabilizing, you say do you think this example is destabilizing, I say absolutely yes, and your response is...

"well, <<this group>> think's its 'positive'." You even air quoted positive because you knew, you felt that positive was something undefined.

And the defense for this position isn't that we can affirm it's positive in any real way. We concede stability out of hand (I mean, obviously) for "progress." But where is the benefit? And what defines positive and progress?

You can't help yourself but to repeat the pattern, over and over, and at the bottom is nothing more than raw individual opinion, unmoored by any obligation above the self.

Man, glad we got Jordan Peterson and Postmodernism in before we got past page two.

Sorry, did that one have too many syllables for you?

I know you well enough to know that you understand what human secularism is and what it says about morality and ethics. What do you want from me? A long written and rambling post or something someone else wrote that is more concise and clear that I roughly agree with?

Don't misunderstand my response below as a dodging of the request to define my system of morals and ethics. I am happy to do so, though I would request some time in doing so.


The problem is that whatever I post, the foundation and structure of what I believe and why will not resemble what you have and you will find its merits severely lacking. And that is fine, I'm not going to convince you of anything. You believe in a God that created the universe, created mankind, gave us purpose, has set objective morals, is the source of all 'good' in the world. And I do not. We shouldn't expect our foundations to look similar.

What supports my floating pier and beam office? Naturalist, rationalist, humanist ideas. And what is the foundation of Christian morality? Jesus? The Scriptures? Teachings and traditions of the Church? And what if there is no God and Jesus never existed? There is no evidence of God. God cannot be proven. God cannot be disproven. God cannot be poked, or prodded, or examined, or questioned, or rationally understood. The teachings of Jesus were written down by men. Human beings. Like me and you. 2000 years ago on the heels of dozens of other religions that had their own virgin born gods who performed miracles and rose from the dead. Your foundation relies on the truth of the claims of Christianity, the life of Jesus, and the existence of God which is, by definition, something incomprehensible. None of any of it can be proven. It is effectively magic that you have to believe in.

If you are wrong about Jesus and God, then the foundation of your morality is what?

If you start from a position that says that disbelief in God (atheism) is irrational and illogical, then any description I offer for morality will be irrational and illogical to you. If you allow yourself to consider that there is no God and you MIGHT be wrong (I know that will be difficult to do), then we are left with trying to develop a set of morals and ethics in a seemingly absurdist reality.

Why should anyone trust the reasons I have for arriving at 'killing is bad'? They shouldn't. They should consider the question themselves and come to their own conclusion and we, as a group, should come to a compromise on what rules to put in place. In my worldview, there is not a moral authority (like yours has).

What prevents the next person from continuing the game of removal and replacement? Nothing. And I expect it to happen.

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ok? this is like that old joke where the man tells God he can create, and says "you see, first you start with a little dirt--" and God interrupts him saying "get your own dirt." If you want to criticize, get your own framework. Using our own concepts of goodness, justice, and love against us is hypocritical at best, ignorant at worst.

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Christianity did not invent the concepts of goodness, justice, and love. Even if you contend that it all originates from God, religions and cultures that pre-date Christianity valued these things. Because these are basic ideas that our particular social animal values and sees utility in. Some form of the Golden Rule existed in ancient Egyptian, Greek, Persian, and Chinese cultures. The 'dirt' is a cognitive and emotional product of our evolution and Christianity does not own it nor were they the first to build something out of it. And the particular 'dirt' we have is well adept to building certain structures. . . . . which is just about every religion and set of ethics share commonalities.

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The problem is, as I see it, something like a fool arguing with a mechanic and an engineer about removing a piece from an engine. The fool complains that the mechanic can't use his experience as a framework against criticism that the engine might be better, and also freely argues with the engineer about engine performance with no understanding of thermodynamics and indeed rejecting the very idea of the laws of thermodynamics as outmoded.

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If the engineer and mechanic can offer justification for their positions through empiricism, then I would say that fool is a fool indeed.

What if the engineer and mechanic tell the fool that the means by which they know how to work the engine and design it optimally is through revelation by the engine gods? And what if they tell the fool that there is no proof the engine works or that it performs better with the part - but rather it must be believed without evidence? I am not inclined to call this person a fool. [edit: or maybe he's still a fool, but I think he's at least right to be skeptical of the mechanic and engineer in this case]

I believe an a naturalistic approach to understanding reality and your understanding of reality includes an additional piece discovered through faith/spiritualism (however you want to put it). We aren't going to agree on this point. I'm fine with agreeing to disagree and respecting your position.

Zobel said:

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Sorry, did that one have too many syllables for you?

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Yep...for sure.

GQaggie said:

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Of course it doesn't mean it is true. Neither does the destructive nature of solipsism mean it is not true. I didn't reason that way. I simply pushed back against your assertion that belief in axiomatic objective morality is silly because it isn't demanded. Nothing is demanded in that sense.

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This isn't the case in philosophy extreme parsimony is used when selecting presuppositions. We generally limit these to things upon which are required to build and justify our knowledge of things without getting into a loop of solipsism or mind in a vat type thinking. Assuming moral objectivity is more similar to assuming the earth is 6k years old than it is to assume a universe exists as far as being foundational.

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I believe in trees. When I am conceptualizing a tree in my mind, I think of a trunk, branches, twigs, and leaves. When I hear and read others describe trees in ways similar to my understanding, I am confident that my idea of a tree is consistent with some reality. If everyone else were to describe trees in ways completely foreign to my understanding, I would begin to question whether or not I actually had the right idea about trees.

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But we actually have that for morality. People even of identical culture and faith have a different moral view on all kinds of things. How do you explain this?

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Similarly, I believe in good and evil. When I hear and read others describe good and evil in ways similar to my understanding, I am confident that my idea of good and evil is consistent with some reality.

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People have very wide-ranging beliefs of what is good and evil, and that various even more across history.

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If the premise is that morality is axiomatic and imbedded within us, then we would expect to see collective opinions as evidence of it.

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No we would expect to see almost perfectly unanimous collective opinions, as we do for say vision, hearing, mathematics. For morals we don't see this at all.

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I don't think your assertion is clear at all. I believe there is remarkable consistency throughout time and throughout cultures of the basic moral principles. Certainly how they are applied has changed greatly over time and place, but I believe the basic principles endure.

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Really? You think you have much in common with many ancient peoples with regard to your moral views? You are talking of people who think slavery is morally acceptable, racism is morally justified, sexism is morally justified, divine right of kings and their commands, murder, theft, and even genocide of people outside the tribe are morally justified, forced marriage, torture of infidels witches is morally justified. The list goes on.

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Why would I be confident that my sense of vision provides access to an objective reality but think that my sense of right and wrong does not?

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Do you have ancient peoples who 's vision lead to dramatically different claims about reality like we do for morals?

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For the purposes of this discussion, I am absolutely presupposing the God revealed in the Hebrew and New Testament scriptures exists. That is the God in which I believe and the God under consideration for my part of the discussion with respect to the validity of Euthyphro's dilemma. If those terms are unacceptable, then, as I said, this just becomes another argument about whether or not God exists.

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Again, you can pick any god you wish-but for the purposes of the euthyphro dilemma you can't pressupose they are good. This then isn't philosophy is sophistry. You aren't engaging with the question.

That's like having a debate about the existence of god and you pressupposing god exists and claiming you've dealt with the question-you haven't, you simply aren't interested in engaging it.

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As I understand the dilemma, the first horn is the idea that the good is simply a function of God's whim and power. God likes these things, and he has the power to declare them good. Good is therefore arbitrary.

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It's broader than that. The second horn (you have them backwards) deals with the fact that the nature of god isn't logically fixed. So rooting morals in god simply because they are god leads to them being fundamentally arbitrary. The god in this scenario need not be whimsical or capricious, he can be totally immutable and unchanging and the issue remains.

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The second horn presents a good grounded in some standard external to God, to which he then conforms himself. Good is therefore above and apart from God.

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This is correct except it's the first horn.

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It seems to me that a third option is for good to be grounded in God himself.

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This doesn't work, it's really just the second horn. Grounding good in god's nature is no less arbitrary than grounding good in god's power or god's opinion. You are sill hosed unless you can logically demonstrate that gods nature MUST be good. And you are no more stronger ground than someone who claims god's opinion, or god's commands are good.

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I believe it also avoids the first since good would not subject to whim or change as God and his nature are immutable.

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A completely immutable god is still subject to the second horn. The issue with the second horn isn't caprice, it's that the nature of god isn't logically bound to be any certain way.

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The question of whether a thing is good because God loves it, or if he loves it because it is good becomes nonsensical when both love and good are grounded in God. There can be no temporal or causative relationship between the two.

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You misunderstand. You aren't asking the right question which still applies. It's a sidestep not meeting it head on.
The basic question is in the form:
Is that which is good commanded by god because it's good, or is it good because God commands it.

It's the same question when you try and substitute gods nature:

Is god's nature good because it's good, or is it good because it matches god's nature?

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We come to know good via God's revelation.

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This actually takes you back to the first horn where god's good is being judged.

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He has revealed it to us via our moral intuition and via his written revelation.

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You are now switching to an external standard of how we know god is good.

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What do you want from me?

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there's not much you can do here, other than I suppose admit what you write here:

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Why should anyone trust the reasons I have for arriving at 'killing is bad'? They shouldn't. They should consider the question themselves and come to their own conclusion and we, as a group, should come to a compromise on what rules to put in place. In my worldview, there is not a moral authority (like yours has).

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if this is the best you've got, then you have basically no foundation whatsoever. this is 100% moral relativism, where all you're rooted in is the negotiated average opinion. here there are no rules, and no absolutes, and no axioms.

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Christianity did not invent the concepts of goodness, justice, and love. Even if you contend that it all originates from God, religions and cultures that pre-date Christianity valued these things. Because these are basic ideas that our particular social animal values and sees utility in. Some form of the Golden Rule existed in ancient Egyptian, Greek, Persian, and Chinese cultures. The 'dirt' is a cognitive and emotional product of our evolution and Christianity does not own it nor were they the first to build something out of it. And the particular 'dirt' we have is well adept to building certain structures. . . . . which is just about every religion and set of ethics share commonalities.

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Yeah, the problem is this is at odds with the above statement. This is the crux: you can't have both. You can't have concepts of goodness, justice, and love that have any concrete meaning when the entire structure is predicated on collected and averaged opinions.

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If the engineer and mechanic can offer justification for their positions through empiricism, then I would say that fool is a fool indeed.

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welcome to my side of the argument. what's the empirical evidence supporting what we're doing to the underpinnings of western civ? i mean if we're going to be scientists about this shouldn't we talk about evidence?

just say you're a moral relativist aiming for utility, and that utility is going to be a continually moving target, and we can all be on the same page. at least then we won't fool around with ideas like "good" or "higher" or "rights" or "love" or "sacrifice" like they mean anything, because they don't. they can't. all that matters in this framework is the current cultural opinion.

which, as i said earlier, is remarkably similar to how we wind up treating most of our institutions these days, example being the US Constitution. what's dangerous is that this is not coupled with understanding or even empiricism, and the mob doesn't even have to justify their approach or even prove that it will work, or what they're trying to do.

Edit to add. This is just majority rules or might makes right in fancy clothes. If that sounds wrong or bad to you, that's because it is.

I thought I was on record as being a moral relativist, but yes, I would subscribe to a version of moral relativism. I think it is a reasonable conclusion of being an atheist, but I know some disagree with that.

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Christianity did not invent the concepts of goodness, justice, and love. Even if you contend that it all originates from God, religions and cultures that pre-date Christianity valued these things. Because these are basic ideas that our particular social animal values and sees utility in. Some form of the Golden Rule existed in ancient Egyptian, Greek, Persian, and Chinese cultures. The 'dirt' is a cognitive and emotional product of our evolution and Christianity does not own it nor were they the first to build something out of it. And the particular 'dirt' we have is well adept to building certain structures. . . . . which is just about every religion and set of ethics share commonalities.

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Yeah, the problem is this is at odds with the above statement. This is the crux: you can't have both. You can't have concepts of goodness, justice, and love that have any concrete meaning when the entire structure is predicated on collected and averaged opinions.

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I think we disagree on this, but maybe just semantically. But, before I dive into how I see it, I want to cover "objective morality".

I know its been said over and over by me and others on this board, but what does it mean for an objective morality to exist if we do not have the ability to understand it without our subjective lenses? Take an issue like the birth control pill. Presumably, with an objective absolute morality, there would be a single correct moral position. However, my understanding is that some Christians (ie Catholics) do not endorse the use of un-natural birth control nor support it as a moral action. And some Christians ((ie Presbyterians) do not oppose the use of birth control nor condemn it as immoral. Someone is right and someone is wrong. To my knowledge, the issue is not explicitly covered. A quick search found only some possibly related versus. The point is that you have two groups of people subscribing to the same moral objective foundation and reaching differing conclusions. And then their church structure was built on the collected averages of the opinions of its members. Postulating that objective morality is not sufficient to escape the subjective reality by which we understand those concrete meanings. And simply asserting the Presbyterians are wrong because [insert Chapter and Verse] is an insufficient argument for human beings to make. If God pops his head through the clouds and weighs in, then lets listen to what He has to say. Until that time, its just men arguing. Men with their own biases and experiences and interpretations and hidden agendas.

Now that that is done . . .We all have our own personal subjective understandings of good, justice, love, etc. Using these words has utility insomuch as we have a general agreement on what the words mean. It doesn't have to be an exact agreement. . . just enough overlap to permit the utility of the words in conversation. What I propose is that humans generally inherit reasonably similar "dirt" (cognitive and emotional product of evolution) such that these concepts are similarly experienced and understood by people with some level of deviance.

And after that, culture plays a huge role in how we understand these concepts. While not all religions have the same level of objectivism in their morality, its clear that there are significant differences between specific moral teachings in different religions. The position of many Christians that God will judge us each relative to the environmental and cultural differences we get stuck with, is interesting. While I understand it is not an endorsement of relativism, it seems to suggest an objective above which moral structure we adhere to. Like we are all graded on a curve based on where and when we are born because there is an understanding that each person who understands morality will understand it differently. Even those that believe their morality is objective. This line of thinking would suggest to me that a moral objectivist should be more humble regarding their understanding and interpretation of objective good. Unless of course, you KNOW you have the correct understanding of objective morality, then I suppose there is no need for humility.

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welcome to my side of the argument. what's the empirical evidence supporting what we're doing to the underpinnings of western civ? i mean if we're going to be scientists about this shouldn't we talk about evidence?

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What exactly are we doing to the underpinnings of Western civilization? Like you said earlier, the criteria by which we evaluate are different. Maybe you think an engine is 'better' if it is optimized for power and maybe I think its 'better' if its optimized for efficiency. Often times, those two goals are at odds with one another.

And Western civilization as compared to when and which underpinnings? I would say that today, Westerners have more freedom, more opportunity, more access to food and water, better education, and better healthcare. You might argue that our 'soul' has suffered. It is difficult to be scientists about this if we disagree on which evidence to consider and how to interpret the evidence.

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Edit to add. This is just majority rules or might makes right in fancy clothes. If that sounds wrong or bad to you, that's because it is.

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I don't think it sounds wrong. It is certainly worrisome and uncomfortable. But, the universe doesn't care about your comfort. And reality does not care about our philosophic intuitions.

Also, I was curious for a response to this part. Apologies if the tone sounds aggressive.

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. . . .And what is the foundation of Christian morality? Jesus? The Scriptures? Teachings and traditions of the Church? And what if there is no God and Jesus never existed? There is no evidence of God. God cannot be proven. God cannot be disproven. God cannot be poked, or prodded, or examined, or questioned, or rationally understood. The teachings of Jesus were written down by men. Human beings. Like me and you. 2000 years ago on the heels of dozens of other religions that had their own virgin born gods who performed miracles and rose from the dead. Your foundation relies on the truth of the claims of Christianity, the life of Jesus, and the existence of God which is, by definition, something incomprehensible. None of any of it can be proven. It is effectively magic that you have to believe in.

If you are wrong about Jesus and God, then the foundation of your morality is what?

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kurt vonnegut said:

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Also, I was curious for a response to this part. Apologies if the tone sounds aggressive.

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. . . .And what is the foundation of Christian morality? Jesus? The Scriptures? Teachings and traditions of the Church? And what if there is no God and Jesus never existed? There is no evidence of God. God cannot be proven. God cannot be disproven. God cannot be poked, or prodded, or examined, or questioned, or rationally understood. The teachings of Jesus were written down by men. Human beings. Like me and you. 2000 years ago on the heels of dozens of other religions that had their own virgin born gods who performed miracles and rose from the dead. Your foundation relies on the truth of the claims of Christianity, the life of Jesus, and the existence of God which is, by definition, something incomprehensible. None of any of it can be proven. It is effectively magic that you have to believe in.

If you are wrong about Jesus and God, then the foundation of your morality is what?

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The fine tuning can be ignored/dismissed, but that is 'extraordinarily intellectually lazy' as a smarter man than I once put it. But hey, not like he was a brilliant physicist who wrote books about his beliefs or anything. Oh, wait…

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what does it mean for an objective morality to exist if we do not have the ability to understand it without our subjective lenses?

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no more and no less to understand that reality exists and we do not have the ability to comprehend it but through individual experience. yet i'm fairly sure you wouldn't turn around and say that because we under-experience reality through limited sense perception reality itself is subjective. there's a vast difference between saying there is a thing and we approach it incorrectly or not and there is nothing above the individual experience. it is no different whether that thing is Truth or Good or Right vs Real or Extant or Physical.

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We all have our own personal subjective understandings of good, justice, love, etc. Using these words has utility insomuch as we have a general agreement on what the words mean.

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i'm sorry but you can't have collective meaning without externality. all you can say is that for you in this moment you ascribe this meaning, and for whatever sample size in this moment we agree on meaning, but that's the end. there's no definition, there's no constraint, and you're fundamentally barred from making any judgment whatever on meaning outside of that moment. you cannot say, for example, that it was bad for the Uvalde shooter to murder those children. you can say you think it was bad, you can say a group of people think it was bad, but you can't actually say it was bad, because Good is not something that exists for you to grasp or negate.

Consider: Julius Caesar killed or enslaved half to two-thirds of the population of Gaul in a war he engaged as an individual to further his political career and make money. Good? Bad? You can't say.

Slavery in the world was normative for the majority of human history. Good? Bad? I can't see how in your system you can answer other than to say it was moral for them at the time. Yes?

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Like we are all graded on a curve based on where and when we are born because there is an understanding that each person who understands morality will understand it differently.

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I have no issue with this. But judgment can only be made against a criterion.

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What exactly are we doing to the underpinnings of Western civilization?

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The ideas of individual liberty, rule of law, and human rights as we know them in the west are all predicated on shared externalities of meaning which we consider objective. Meaning is what is being attacked - where to derive meaning from, how we participate in the very ideas you say are common to us. Values and how those values are to be applied, or not, in our society. The sense of what is good and bad, what is heroic or cowardly, what is worthy to emulate. The entire fabric of our culture, every story, every movie, every video game... every football game, the Spirit of Aggieland, it all is of a piece and it is all referenced back to some basic presuppositions.

And indeed all of the wealth and progress you describe is the fruits of those presuppositions. It is no accident that freedom, opportunity, wealth, food, education, healthcare are all present here and not ubiquitous in the human experience. These aren't products of white people or Europeans or whatever. They're the direct result of a set of ideas which are held to be sacrosanct. Your agenda negates the premise while inexplicably assumes the program will continue.

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I don't think it sounds wrong. It is certainly worrisome and uncomfortable. But, the universe doesn't care about your comfort. And reality does not care about our philosophic intuitions.

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you don't think it sounds wrong because the word wrong is not a word you can use. genocide, rape, murder, slavery, are all on the table here. that's what majority rules and might makes right is.

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Also, I was curious for a response to this part. Apologies if the tone sounds aggressive.

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well the tone is aggressive because it asks some questions, assumes some shallow answers and then takes a dump on them. it didn't really merit a response because it wasn't a question, it was a rant in the form of a rhetorical question.

it's also thoroughly ignorant with regard to the claims in the commonality of Christianity with other religions. in fact it is in the differences, not the commonalities, with those other religions that the profound meaning takes place.

part of the reason i think there is evidence of God is precisely because of the shared commonalities we have as humans, these common stories which are so deeply embedded in us that we can't get away from them. even when you are openly denying their existence you still appeal to them to make your case. you use terms like foundation, understanding, truth, proven but these are all borrowed from a system you think doesn't exist. the fact that as you run away from it you're forced into affirming it is evidence on the face.

and, the inversion and affirmation of all of these stories in Christianity is evidence. it is so radically counter to the commonality, and yet clearly part of it.

you say its magic and you want evidence, but you yourself are the evidence. you'll just handwave away profound and deep evidence (here i am using depth to describe meaning, structure, order) in favor of something else you want to call evidence, all while also happily saying none of it has meaning anyway. so why bother?

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GQaggie said:


Of course it doesn't mean it is true. Neither does the destructive nature of solipsism mean it is not true. I didn't reason that way. I simply pushed back against your assertion that belief in axiomatic objective morality is silly because it isn't demanded. Nothing is demanded in that sense.

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This isn't the case in philosophy extreme parsimony is used when selecting presuppositions. We generally limit these to things upon which are required to build and justify our knowledge of things without getting into a loop of solipsism or mind in a vat type thinking. Assuming moral objectivity is more similar to assuming the earth is 6k years old than it is to assume a universe exists as far as being foundational.

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I believe in trees. When I am conceptualizing a tree in my mind, I think of a trunk, branches, twigs, and leaves. When I hear and read others describe trees in ways similar to my understanding, I am confident that my idea of a tree is consistent with some reality. If everyone else were to describe trees in ways completely foreign to my understanding, I would begin to question whether or not I actually had the right idea about trees.

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But we actually have that for morality. People even of identical culture and faith have a different moral view on all kinds of things. How do you explain this?

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Similarly, I believe in good and evil. When I hear and read others describe good and evil in ways similar to my understanding, I am confident that my idea of good and evil is consistent with some reality.

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People have very wide-ranging beliefs of what is good and evil, and that various even more across history.

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If the premise is that morality is axiomatic and imbedded within us, then we would expect to see collective opinions as evidence of it.

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No we would expect to see almost perfectly unanimous collective opinions, as we do for say vision, hearing, mathematics. For morals we don't see this at all.

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I don't think your assertion is clear at all. I believe there is remarkable consistency throughout time and throughout cultures of the basic moral principles. Certainly how they are applied has changed greatly over time and place, but I believe the basic principles endure.

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Really? You think you have much in common with many ancient peoples with regard to your moral views? You are talking of people who think slavery is morally acceptable, racism is morally justified, sexism is morally justified, divine right of kings and their commands, murder, theft, and even genocide of people outside the tribe are morally justified, forced marriage, torture of infidels witches is morally justified. The list goes on.

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I find no compelling argument in this to demonstrate why I should believe that my physical senses reveal a physical reality but disbelieve that my moral sense reveals a moral reality. The only real objection here is that ideas of morality have been to variant throughout time and cultures. I disagree with that assertion. I believe the basic principles are remarkably similar despite the variance in application.

Yes, people have believed, and some still do believe, slavery is morally acceptable. Two things there. One, in every culture of which I am aware, there have been those who felt it was wrong. Two, those who believed it acceptable felt a need to justify it morally. There was a sense that the institution might at least be perceived to violate the moral standard, and thus, there was a need to show why it did not. The basic moral principle was intact, but the circumstance was felt to be an exception. Slaves were seen as less than human, or at least a lesser form of human. Same thing with racism and sexism. There was a view that the persecuted people were somehow a lower life form than the people doing the persecution.

Show me a civilization where murder and theft were generally accepted without significant "justifying" qualifiers. Genocide is always coupled with attempts to justify it by the basic moral standard. The offending group characterizes the victim group as detrimental to society, in league with forces of evil, or guilty of some other crime against humanity that necessitates their removal.

All you have shown is differences in application and abusive attempts to justify immoral behavior with the accepted moral standard. You have not shown a difference in the basic moral principles. There is a reason all justifications sound alike and appeal to the same principles.

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As I understand the dilemma, the first horn is the idea that the good is simply a function of God's whim and power. God likes these things, and he has the power to declare them good. Good is therefore arbitrary.

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It's broader than that. The second horn (you have them backwards) deals with the fact that the nature of god isn't logically fixed. So rooting morals in god simply because they are god leads to them being fundamentally arbitrary. The god in this scenario need not be whimsical or capricious, he can be totally immutable and unchanging and the issue remains.

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Because it had been awhile, I went back and reread the Euthyphro discussion. Please point out which passage you believe deals with God's nature not being logically fixed because I'm not seeing it.

With a God whose attributes include aseity and immutability, what does arbitrary even mean? If he is the source of all existence, then what higher grounding for anything can be provided than to be grounded in God. If good is arbitrary in this context, then all is arbitrary, for all that is real is grounded in God for its reality.

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I believe it also avoids the first since good would not subject to whim or change as God and his nature are immutable.

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A completely immutable god is still subject to the second horn. The issue with the second horn isn't caprice, it's that the nature of god isn't logically bound to be any certain way.

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Again, what does this mean, and what does it matter?

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The question of whether a thing is good because God loves it, or if he loves it because it is good becomes nonsensical when both love and good are grounded in God. There can be no temporal or causative relationship between the two.

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You misunderstand. You aren't asking the right question which still applies. It's a sidestep not meeting it head on.
The basic question is in the form:
Is that which is good commanded by god because it's good, or is it good because God commands it.

It's the same question when you try and substitute gods nature:

Is god's nature good because it's good, or is it good because it matches god's nature?

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Here is the exact quote:

"Is the pious loved by the gods because it's pious, or it is pious because it is loved?"

My reformat was accurate. Again, the dilemma simply does not apply when all things that are real, including good, are grounded in God. There can be no causal relationship between the love of God and goodness since they are both grounded in him.

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We come to know good via God's revelation.

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This actually takes you back to the first horn where god's good is being judged.

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He has revealed it to us via our moral intuition and via his written revelation.

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You are now switching to an external standard of how we know god is good.

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God's good is not being judged. I don't see how you get there. I also don't see the problem with an external standard. As we are not God, and therefore, not the source of good, we are dependent on him to reveal the good to us in some way. He has chosen to do so both internally and externally.

nortex97 said:

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kurt vonnegut said:

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Also, I was curious for a response to this part. Apologies if the tone sounds aggressive.

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. . . .And what is the foundation of Christian morality? Jesus? The Scriptures? Teachings and traditions of the Church? And what if there is no God and Jesus never existed? There is no evidence of God. God cannot be proven. God cannot be disproven. God cannot be poked, or prodded, or examined, or questioned, or rationally understood. The teachings of Jesus were written down by men. Human beings. Like me and you. 2000 years ago on the heels of dozens of other religions that had their own virgin born gods who performed miracles and rose from the dead. Your foundation relies on the truth of the claims of Christianity, the life of Jesus, and the existence of God which is, by definition, something incomprehensible. None of any of it can be proven. It is effectively magic that you have to believe in.

If you are wrong about Jesus and God, then the foundation of your morality is what?

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The fine tuning can be ignored/dismissed, but that is 'extraordinarily intellectually lazy' as a smarter man than I once put it. But hey, not like he was a brilliant physicist who wrote books about his beliefs or anything. Oh, wait…

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The fine tuning argument appeals to me and is one of the few arguments that really gives me pause. It informs my insistence on the agnostic part of my agnostic atheist label. Rev. Polkinghorne offers 3 explanations. He dismisses the first two, but doesn't argue that they aren't possible. I don't object to consideration of the 3rd idea, but it only gets you to a base level existence of some deity. It doesn't follow that this deity must care about us, have objective morals, etc.

Its an interesting question, but I don't agree that it serves as evidence of God. It serves as an imperfect basis to infer the existence of God for a lot of people. I say 'imperfect' because we really are hugely ignorant on how to 'create existence'. I've certainly never created an existence. To make demands on what is necessary to create existence in light of that ignorance is what I object to.

Zobel said:

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Also, I was curious for a response to this part. Apologies if the tone sounds aggressive.

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well the tone is aggressive because it asks some questions, assumes some shallow answers and then takes a dump on them. it didn't really merit a response because it wasn't a question, it was a rant in the form of a rhetorical question.

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Pleas let me try again. With more simple questions.

Do you consider it possible that you could be incorrect about the existence of God.

Do you consider it possible that your understanding of God could be mostly incorrect?

kurt vonnegut said:

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I thought I was on record as being a moral relativist, but yes, I would subscribe to a version of moral relativism. I think it is a reasonable conclusion of being an atheist, but I know some disagree with that.

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Christianity did not invent the concepts of goodness, justice, and love. Even if you contend that it all originates from God, religions and cultures that pre-date Christianity valued these things. Because these are basic ideas that our particular social animal values and sees utility in. Some form of the Golden Rule existed in ancient Egyptian, Greek, Persian, and Chinese cultures. The 'dirt' is a cognitive and emotional product of our evolution and Christianity does not own it nor were they the first to build something out of it. And the particular 'dirt' we have is well adept to building certain structures. . . . . which is just about every religion and set of ethics share commonalities.

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Yeah, the problem is this is at odds with the above statement. This is the crux: you can't have both. You can't have concepts of goodness, justice, and love that have any concrete meaning when the entire structure is predicated on collected and averaged opinions.

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I think we disagree on this, but maybe just semantically. But, before I dive into how I see it, I want to cover "objective morality".

I know its been said over and over by me and others on this board, but what does it mean for an objective morality to exist if we do not have the ability to understand it without our subjective lenses? Take an issue like the birth control pill. Presumably, with an objective absolute morality, there would be a single correct moral position. However, my understanding is that some Christians (ie Catholics) do not endorse the use of un-natural birth control nor support it as a moral action. And some Christians ((ie Presbyterians) do not oppose the use of birth control nor condemn it as immoral. Someone is right and someone is wrong. To my knowledge, the issue is not explicitly covered. A quick search found only some possibly related versus. The point is that you have two groups of people subscribing to the same moral objective foundation and reaching differing conclusions. And then their church structure was built on the collected averages of the opinions of its members. Postulating that objective morality is not sufficient to escape the subjective reality by which we understand those concrete meanings. And simply asserting the Presbyterians are wrong because [insert Chapter and Verse] is an insufficient argument for human beings to make. If God pops his head through the clouds and weighs in, then lets listen to what He has to say. Until that time, its just men arguing. Men with their own biases and experiences and interpretations and hidden agendas.

Now that that is done . . .We all have our own personal subjective understandings of good, justice, love, etc. Using these words has utility insomuch as we have a general agreement on what the words mean. It doesn't have to be an exact agreement. . . just enough overlap to permit the utility of the words in conversation. What I propose is that humans generally inherit reasonably similar "dirt" (cognitive and emotional product of evolution) such that these concepts are similarly experienced and understood by people with some level of deviance.

And after that, culture plays a huge role in how we understand these concepts. While not all religions have the same level of objectivism in their morality, its clear that there are significant differences between specific moral teachings in different religions. The position of many Christians that God will judge us each relative to the environmental and cultural differences we get stuck with, is interesting. While I understand it is not an endorsement of relativism, it seems to suggest an objective above which moral structure we adhere to. Like we are all graded on a curve based on where and when we are born because there is an understanding that each person who understands morality will understand it differently. Even those that believe their morality is objective. This line of thinking would suggest to me that a moral objectivist should be more humble regarding their understanding and interpretation of objective good. Unless of course, you KNOW you have the correct understanding of objective morality, then I suppose there is no need for humility.

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welcome to my side of the argument. what's the empirical evidence supporting what we're doing to the underpinnings of western civ? i mean if we're going to be scientists about this shouldn't we talk about evidence?

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What exactly are we doing to the underpinnings of Western civilization? Like you said earlier, the criteria by which we evaluate are different. Maybe you think an engine is 'better' if it is optimized for power and maybe I think its 'better' if its optimized for efficiency. Often times, those two goals are at odds with one another.

And Western civilization as compared to when and which underpinnings? I would say that today, Westerners have more freedom, more opportunity, more access to food and water, better education, and better healthcare. You might argue that our 'soul' has suffered. It is difficult to be scientists about this if we disagree on which evidence to consider and how to interpret the evidence.

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Edit to add. This is just majority rules or might makes right in fancy clothes. If that sounds wrong or bad to you, that's because it is.

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I don't think it sounds wrong. It is certainly worrisome and uncomfortable. But, the universe doesn't care about your comfort. And reality does not care about our philosophic intuitions.

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We've reached the end of the debate where the materialist uses philosophical intuition to state that reality does not care about our philosophic intuitions lol.

Dumitru Staniloae on hell- "If in the spiritual writings hell is often called a darkened and tenebrous land, a land of eternal darkness, this might mean the permanent establishment of existence in this chaotic kaleidoscope of inconsistent and meaningless images".

So those who worship the self in this life will most likely get exactly this. Non-communion with reality since like Hume says there is no causality with autonomous man. Hell would be like slipping into nothingness for eternity since there is no way to establish a relationship with anything in reality while being cut off from the first cause. The materialist wants to believe this right now in debate but doesn't understand what that would actually be like.

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We've reached the end of the debate where the materialist uses philosophical intuition to state that reality does not care about our philosophic intuitions

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Quoted for truth

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Do you consider it possible that you could be incorrect about the existence of God.

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Sure, anything is possible. I might not actually exist, and since I'm working off of my perception and only my perception, and I'm fallible, anything is on the table.

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Do you consider it possible that your understanding of God could be mostly incorrect?

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Not really - only within the realm that I'm wrong about errthing. In the regime I'm working in, my experiences, no. I have experienced something that as long as I can trust what I have - and what choice do I have? - I am where I am.

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no more and no less to understand that reality exists and we do not have the ability to comprehend it but through individual experience. yet i'm fairly sure you wouldn't turn around and say that because we under-experience reality through limited sense perception reality itself is subjective. there's a vast difference between saying there is a thing and we approach it incorrectly or not and there is nothing above the individual experience

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Well put, I like this!

No, I would not say that reality itself is subject. But, I can interact with reality in a way that I cannot interact with an 'objective standard of morality'.

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Aside from this, I think a lot of the rest of your post is pointing out some uncomfortable conclusions of moral relativism. I would take some exception to those conclusions and how you've described those conclusions, but not with the basic idea that moral relativism ultimately results in not being able to say things are universally good or bad. You've provided a good description of why it might be uncomfortable, but not for why it is untrue, in my opinion.

At the end of the day, I have a vested interest in how society defines good and bad, which is why I participate in some of these discussions. While my reasoning seems absurd, I don't think its any more absurd than asserting objective morality must exist and then ascribing unverifiable definitions to 'good' and 'bad'. Definitions that, if objective morality exists, might be completely wrong.

Orthodox Texan said:

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kurt vonnegut said:

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I don't think it sounds wrong. It is certainly worrisome and uncomfortable. But, the universe doesn't care about your comfort. And reality does not care about our philosophic intuitions.

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We've reached the end of the debate where the materialist uses philosophical intuition to state that reality does not care about our philosophic intuitions lol.

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The reality of our observations in things like relativity and quantum mechanics is counter-intuitive. I only meant to suggest a limitation to intuition. This is where I was going with the comment.

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No, I would not say that reality itself is subject. But, I can interact with reality in a way that I cannot interact with an 'objective standard of morality'.

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why? how do you interact with reality? not directly, through senses. But not directly through senses, but through rationalization of sense via perception. You don't see everything your eyes lay on, you don't feel everything that touches your skin, and you don't remember everything you sense. You ascribe meaning and reason to sense perception, and that's you how interact with reality. This is identical to how we interact with morality.

there's no difference between two people agreeing "this is right" and two people agreeing "this is solid" when neither are true, or are true in a limited sense based on perception or are artifacts of frame of reference. you just want to categorize one or the other.

it's fine to say, well true and not true are categories that are only descriptive of the utility of models. ok, i'm ok with that - but that makes models of reality and models of morality different only application, not different things. i might even say that they are exactly the same, only modeling different parts of reality.

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You've provided a good description of why it might be uncomfortable, but not for why it is untrue, in my opinion.

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I can't say anything is true or untrue if everything is relative. Truth is just as relative, so who cares whether its true or not. In your system I can say its true for me, and you can say it's not true for you, then we hi five and move on. Or if we're considering whether its true or not whether I can subjugate you simply because I'm stronger than you, I hi five you and rob, enslave, kill, or rape you and your family. When that happens you can comfort yourself by saying "this only seems uncomfortable to me."

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While my reasoning seems absurd, I don't think its any more absurd than asserting objective morality must exist and then ascribing unverifiable definitions to 'good' and 'bad'. Definitions that, if objective morality exists, might be completely wrong.

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no more than any description of reality is subject to affirmation or recalcitrant experiences.

Zobel said:

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No, I would not say that reality itself is subject. But, I can interact with reality in a way that I cannot interact with an 'objective standard of morality'.

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why? how do you interact with reality? not directly, through senses. But not directly through senses, but through rationalization of sense via perception. You don't see everything your eyes lay on, you don't feel everything that touches your skin, and you don't remember everything you sense. You ascribe meaning and reason to sense perception, and that's you how interact with reality. This is identical to how we interact with morality.

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Humor me . . . .or forgive my ignorance - whichever is most applicable.

I am with you on how we interact with reality. You lose me when you say this is identical to how we interact with morality. I do not perceive morality with my eyes, nor do I touch it with my skin, nor do I experience it in a the same physical manner that I use to perceive and model the physical. Obviously this is not what you were suggesting. Can you explain further how we interact with morality?