Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Still no idea

Lots of good interaction in the last post's comment box.



Hello gentlemen,

Maximum Awesome said:
I'm prepared to admit that my initial impression of you as "closed minded" was off the mark.

That's appreciated. Thank you.


To put that another way, we probably do share moral intutions and want to live in a reality where genocide, burkas, acid-in-little-girl's-faces, etc, can be objectively ruled out in a way satisfactory to everyone.

That depends on what you mean by "objectively ruled out". I don't know of a way that this could be accomplished in a possibilian worldview, at least an atheistic one.
OTOH I absolutely decry acid in little girls' faces. Burqas as demanded by fascistic Islam, yes. Genocide when it's undertaken by men with evil agendas, yes. There are a few instances in history in which genocide was justified, but the vast majority of genocidal actions throughout history have been UNjustified, so we're close to the same page.

But as to the WHY we're on the same page, I'm there b/c I obey and love Jesus.
You're there b/c Jesus has made you in His image; you know that certain things are actually morally wrong but by your professed worldview deny their foundation. You're borrowing from my worldview while professing not-my-worldview. The sooner you quit your self-deception, the better for you.


I'll try to stop being such a dick.

:-P Believe me, I've met far worse. You're not too bad. This is a friendly discussion and debate, so no hard feelings here, please be assured.


I was listing two acts near the opposing poles of "caused discomfort" to give an idea of a vast scale, as if I had said "all the numbers from zero to infinity."

Ah, OK.
Well, may I ask on what basis you rate the one on the low end and the other on the high end?  How do you know which is which?


I see as the mistake of claiming we can be sure:
1) There's no god(s).
2) Therefore, nihilism is correct.

In fact, I make that very argument. Here's why.
Only the biblical worldview is self-consistent and coherent, and only it thus provides a reason to think that our cognitive faculties are reliably aimed at producing true beliefs. Atheism never even gets off the ground in that regard; the "my cognitive faculties are tuned to reality" is an article of absolute blind faith for an atheist, with no possibility of ever knowing whether it is actually true.
Same for an empiricist - no evidence can be adduced to determine whether evidence is the best way to discover truth.

Same for false religions such as Islam - they suffer from irresolvable internal contradictions and thus give every reason to doubt that the deity in question is a sufficient foundation for knowledge, reason, and morality.

Thus, the only possibility is nihilism, if one is to be consistent.



You say (the trunk) contains X, muslims say it has Y, ancient greeks say it has Z - I say I have no idea what's in there but I'm open to the evidence.

I'm afraid I can't agree with the analogy. Jesus isn't contained in a trunk; He created everything, including you and your brain, and He is the master of it all.
You're not an external observer; you're living in Jesus' universe, as is the Muslim. I see the truth about it and you and the Muslim won't admit the truth about it. It's more like the trunk is a McDurgle brand, and Mr. McDurgle is standing right there showing you his trunk: "You like it? Let me tell you about it," and you're looking the trunk over to try to show that it's not a trunk, but actually a giraffe.

IOW, you're not "open to the evidence" at all.
1) If you were, you'd be a Christian.
2) You SAY you rely on evidence to inform your decisions, but that's not true either. There's no evidence to back up your moral claims, which you make in abundance. That's the naturalistic fallacy.
Further, there's no evidence for the assertion that evidence is a good way to discover truth. You assumed that. Why did you assume it? Answer that and we're getting more to the heart of the issue.


I was using the "conversation stopper" argument strictly in reference to the possible formulation of a universal moral rule.

Would you say that "it is OK to rape and torture little girls for fun" is open for "conversation"?


An honest account of what we know and what we don't is the precursor to finding truth.

Do you know or not-know the truth of that statement?
See what you're doing? You're claiming you're talking on a foundational level, but in reality you already have your mind made up and you're sneaking in your assumptions.  What is your real position on these matters?


would you like it if such an objective standard were to be formulated, without recourse to supernatural claims about any particular god?

Whether I'd "like it" is immaterial, really, as I think you'd agree. No, I don't suppose I'd like it, but it wouldn't be the death knell for my position.
I've asked many, many atheists and naturalistic empiricists to provide me with such an objective standard, and they never have been able to. I welcome your attempts, however, to see how it goes. I am a seeker of truth above all.


I do *not* accept the apparent implication that my resulting system is entirely random and variable

OK, then what prevents it from being random and variable?



I would argue that my, admittedly less-clearly-delineated-than-yours moral views are, nonetheless, mostly in agreement with most of yours and most of humanity's.

Which has no bearing on whether it is entirely random and variable, as I'm sure you'd agree.


This similarity, in itself, makes me wonder what these systems may have in common.

How about that everyone is wrong?
Have you ever considered that?



To put that another way, we disagree about the basis of morality, but agree on most of its specifics.

Which is entirely consistent with and explainable given the biblical position, wherein God creates everyone with conscience and with a heart that yearns after eternity, yet by virtue of the Fall of Man, hasten after evil things even while suppressing within themselves the guilt they feel for doing evil.



It may be fine on your end - but it is, still, scapegoat human sacrifice.

Yes, it is.


I'm using it in the "inevitable consequence" sense, that is, that 2+2=5 and 3+3=7 are both wrong because of the principle of addition.

OK, but I still don't see how what I've said doesn't resolve the issue for my position.
God's nature and character IS ITSELF a principle too, in the way you defined it.


You're using "argument from authority", I'm looking for an actual argument.

What you don't seem to realise is that all moral questions reduce to questions of authority and normativity. Who has the right to tell you what to do?
there's no "argument" to be made, in the sense you seem to mean it. That's the problem Hume realised when he delineated the IS/OUGHT gap.
God as Creator and Ultimate Lawgiver and Basis for Morality provides the necessary precondition for objective morality.
No God? Good luck with that precondition; this jumps unjustifiably over that gap, and results in an utterly arbitrary morality.


"I'm disturbed at the idea of god being above his own laws."

He's not above His own laws.
The law is: Don't unjustifiably put people to death.
God is always justified in putting anyone to death whenever He wants. You and other humans are not so justified.
What's the problem?


You seem to be using an ad hoc justification to clean up after all his possible behaviour after the fact.

Yes, I seem to be, but in point of fact I am not. The Bible is much older than you or I. I'm just following what it says.


I realise you feel I have no standard to express dissatisfaction

It's not that I feel you don't have one. It's that you in reality do not have one. Big difference.


At one point, church fathers had a problem with Galileo - they do no longer.

1) The Galileo issue is vastly misunderstood; I suggest you look into it a bit more deeply.
2) Medieval Roman Catholics are most definitely NOT "church fathers".
3) I disagree with medieval RCs far more often than I agree with them, so I reject any association w/o a good argument to that effect.


At one point, the bible was presented as supporting slavery - mainstream christians now reject this.

Both of these examples are of people misunderstanding the biblical text, not a change in the text itself. Yet there were also those at those times who correctly understood it. Why not cite them?
I know why - b/c it would be unhelpful for your argument.


but would you agree that interpretations of it improve over time?

Yes, but in some cases they get worse too.


Evolving, becoming truer to the bible's intent?

Yes, and sometimes devolving to become less true to it. Men are fallible, transient, sinful, unstable, inconsistent. That's why we must base our foundations on the unchanging God.


Would you say the current interpretation of the bible (yours) is the best there has ever been, and that interpretations will continue to improve in future?

I doubt mine is the best that has ever been, but I require argumentation to correct my view. Let's say that my position, by God's grace, is aligned with the truth in many ways, but I am not infallible. I am blessed in that my position on many things is correct, but yet there are other things I don't understand. One must not be blind to his own fallibility and biases.
Yes, interps will doubtless continue into the future just as misinterps will continue to abound and get worse as well.  Humanity is far from monolithic, you know?


how do you think this improvement happens? Is it distinct from the process of rational criticism and marshalling of evidence shown in any other science?

Exegesis and hermeneutics are sciences (as well as arts), so I would be comfortable saying this, yes.



a question for you about "oughts": why are they more necessary for morality than any other scientific discipline?

It's the definition of morality - that which ought to be done.


"you ought to do X but not Y ... if you want to be healthy."

Yes, I hear this a lot, but it always stalls out when one introduces different "if"s, thus demonstrating that the non-Christian has an unstated, underlying moral standard.
For example:
"You ought to carry a garroting cord and hood and not a pack of tissues, if you want to capture children to torture at home."
"You ought to spend your time learning to make explosives and shoot an assault rifle well, if you want to create a fascistic state."
"You ought to kill all the intellectuals and freethinkers, if you want to be a dictator."

Now, the real morality to which you hold (ie, "What I like is what is moral") will rise up and say "Hey, those are not good 'if's!" thus showing that you don't really believe this if-then thing you're professing here.

It's pretty clear you've never thought about this before. I'm not blaming you all that much, but your blame will be much heavier if you should pass this opportunity by: think about this stuff now that you've been confronted with it.
You have a responsibility to repent before Jesus and beg Him to be the Lord of your life and your Savior. Don't pass that up for the sake of your self-centered worldview.


If reason is enough to provide us with principles to rule out genocide, rape, etc

Studying 20th-century history should be enough to disabuse anyone of the notion that it is.


finding ways of behaving that are mutually agreeable for all parties.

Again, how do you know that what is agreeable for all parties is morally right?


maybe "ought" is just a grammatical conjugation, not a fact of reality?

Tell that to a family whose daughter was just raped and murdered. You can't live that out, so who am I to agree with it if you don't?



One more thing, in response to Damion, which Maximum Awesome actually anticipated:
Theistic morality thus becomes "If you desire to please God, you should follow the divine commands."
Humanistic morallity becomes "If you desire humans to thrive more and sufffer less, you should find out what makes that happen and then do more of it." 
Only the latter comes with a research programme.

1) That's not what the biblical morality is.
2) This is demolished by my alternative "if" statements above.
3) Damion has apparently forgotten about the millions of pages that have been written on theology and ethics from theistic authors throughout far more centuries than modern science has been in existence.
4) He has also apparently forgotten that most scientists up to very modern times have been theistic and looked to God to ground their scientific studies. There is every reason to reject this biased assertion about "research programme"s.

13 comments:

Damion said...

Rho,

Re: #1 - What is Biblical morality, if it is not merely obedience to a set of divine commands?  Is there some reason that the 613 mitzvot are considered superior to any arbitrary set of commands?

Re: #2- Your alternative if's make perfect sense to me.  For example, if you want to be absolute authority, it makes sense to kill the freethinkers among the population.  This might help explain why both the Bible and Koran demand capital punishment (or worse) for disbelief.  Personally, I don't want to further such an agenda, but then people of faith are a bit of a puzzle to me.

Re: #3 - Millions of pages over centuries of writing does not make an argument for the ethics found therein.  You have to make the argument for some particular ethical system and why anyone should care about it.

So the question remains, "Why follow the divine commands?"  Is the answer to be stated in terms of alleged divine rewards and punishments?  Is it because obedience is inherently praiseworthy?  Something else?

Rhology said...

Hi Damion,

#1) It's obedience, yes, but it goes far deeper than that. It's becoming like Jesus, it's participating in that which is actually good.
Yes, the reason they are superior is b/c they come from God, Who is the definition of goodness in and of Himself.
As opposed to others, which would be human in origin.

#2) Your alternative if's make perfect sense to me. For example, if you want to be absolute authority, it makes sense to kill the freethinkers among the population.

OK, fair enough.
Why didn't Max Awe use that kind of if, the more brutal kind, when making his case? Why did he default to what's 'nicer', 'fluffier'?

The rest of your answer is not an answer, but rather just an accounting of your personal preferences. But I haven't been asking anyone about what they prefer. I've been asking whether these things are good.


#3) Millions of pages over centuries of writing does not make an argument for the ethics found therein.

That wasn't what I was responding to. Please check it again, as it seems you lost track slightly of your original assertion.


Is the answer to be stated in terms of alleged divine rewards and punishments?

See here.

Maximum Awesome said...

Rho,
Thanks for your response.
It made it clear to me that we're having (at least) two separate discussions here, one of which I was unaware of. If we're going to continue, we should make our positions on them clear.
DISCUSSION 1: Objective morality.
Personally, this is the only discussion I was aware of having, and the one that interests me the most. I understand our stances on this issue as follows (please correct me if I'm wrong):
Rho 1: Without my religious beliefs, there is no way to discriminate between behaviours such as rape, theft, murder, etc, and behaviours such as generosity, compassion, fairness, etc.
Max 1: What about "the degree to which systems of behaviour mutually satisfy all adult participants"? Wouldn't that rule out the "bad" behaviours you list, and rule in the good ones?
Again, I thought that was all we were talking about.
But with your last message, we seem to be getting to -
DISCUSSION 2: Radical solipsism.
Rho 2: Rho's religious beliefs are the only alternative to radical solipsism.
I only realised you were advocating this view with your latest message. You've said that I've never thought about moral questions before, which is true to a point - namely, I've never tried to phrase my definition of morality in objective terms simply because I didn't find it controversial. The first time I tried to take some other kid's candy, or whatever, I assume they either punched me in the eye or told a teacher: either way, a chain of events happened, and happened consistenly any other time I was a dick to someone: further, the broader effects of prosocial vs antisocial behaviour were explained to me, and they made sense: further, there were emotional effects and social benefits to go along with "not being a dick".
Overall, and in many ways, it was made clear to me that being a dick wasn't the way to go, for anybody. Unless I wanted to be a hunted maniac cackling in the deep woods while the FBI dogs searched for me, I'd have to "get along". My definition of morality, thus, has always been "getting along with people", and more broadly "getting along with other living beings".
It's simply never occurred to me to wonder why genocide is "wrong". I learned these lessons as a child. If I were to imagine the effect of trying to kill off all the kids wearing red shirts in the schoolyard, I can imagine the problems that would arise. Projecting this trivially obvious bad idea onto a much larger, or global stage, only makes it more trivially obvious.
So before, when you questioned "how I knew" rape was bad, etc, I thought you were questioning my basis for objective morality, which I found bracing and refreshing, and by which I was forced to articulate the argument "Max 1" to account for the set of rules of thumb I've just described.
But I now see you were questioning at a much deeper level, which ... actually seems much less interesting.
But I'll play along, to a point. Bear in mind, though, that this is my first inkling that you meant to discuss this issue: I looked through a few of the archived discussions on your blog, and see that a few other people have expressed similar reactions - they get a few posts in before they realise that what seemed like a Socratic method is more like a five year old emptily repeating "why".

Maximum Awesome said...

***
(tracieh wrote this:
>I am not trying to be contentious—but you really are the most prone-to-misunderstanding person I’ve every dialogued with. I’ve never had this experience before. When I asked before if you were high, I realize that sounded flip—but I was really wondering if there was something affecting your perception while you wrote (emotional distress or medication). Reading your further input, I’m still wondering. I don’t know how to say it without sounding sarcastic—but I don’t mean it at all in a sarcastic vein.
- here:
http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/2008/08/thumb-to-suck-skirt-to-hold.html?showComment=1219323960000#c992103171973763625
- I'm starting to know how she feels.)
***
So:
You've said this:
>There is literally no reason (that I can think of) to choose "evidence is the best way to discover truth" rather than "fortune cookies are the best way to discover truth" and hold to that (again, by faith), and go through life that way. It's completely arbitrary.
- here:
http://rhoblogy.blogspot.com/2008/08/evidentialisms-bloody-nose.html
That ... statement does not seem to have been made in good faith. I would almost say it sounds like trolling, except for the evident time investment in this persona. Rho, you're of course free to disagree, but I invite any third party readers to contemplate their own feelings of ambivalence regarding the relative worth of fortune cookie based decisions vs evidence. It's like saying a glass of water and the ocean are both "water", so how can you decide which one you'd rather drink without referring to supernatural authority?
There comes a point when "our spade is turned". My question to you would simply be: why is your spade-turn moment more valid than mine? You claim that, because god has such-and-such attributes, you know logic works - but how do you know he has those attributes?
And dear god, don't quote the bible at me. How do you know the bible didn't just randomly form out of nothing in the last few seconds, along with your false memories of it? Ditto for every other method you use to establish your faith. How do you know the positive emotions you get thinking about your faith aren't deliberately twisted by a demon? How do you know your thoughts and memories are valid representations of anything at all?
The point isn't to give a spade-turn moment for each of those separate questions, though: the point is to establish why your spade-turn moment re: your religion is more valid than any other spade-turn moment people use to avoid solipsism.
So if you need an objective rebuttal, how about:
MAX 2: "when confronted with multiple spade-turn moments, we pick the option requiring the least faith".
However,
DISCUSSION 3:
Max 3: Discussion 2 need not be addressed in order to resolve discussion 1.
Damion may have been right, in that your definition of morality ("what we ought to do", right?) is far from his and mine ("a system of behaviour that produces beneficial results for all.")
You seem to think of morality as a top down set of rules held together by the authority of their author (etymology pun?), whereas Damion and I think of it as a system for "getting along" held together by its internal consistency.
But we can circumvent this linguistic disagreement by the phrasing I've used above - which is, again:
Rho 1: Without my religious beliefs, there is no way to objectively discriminate between behaviours such as rape, theft, murder, etc, and behaviours such as generosity, compassion, fairness, etc.
Max 1: What about "the degree to which systems of behaviour mutually satisfy all participants"? Wouldn't that rule out the "bad" behaviours you list, and rule in the good ones?

Maximum Awesome said...

APPENDIX: Random odds and ends.
>IOW, you're not "open to the evidence" at all ... If you were, you'd be a Christian.
That's question begging, right?
>That's the naturalistic fallacy.
I admit I've never heard of that before. So I looked it up. I don't find it compelling.
Basically the inverse of my "hygiene elves" argument, which I stand by. If it is, in fact, "good" to torture, rape, kill, and exterminate each other, suffer for no reason, etc - so what?
If that was what god wanted, would you do it?
The term "good", in that sense, just seems empty and uninteresting to me. It's like asking how we know breathing is "fantabulous" - I don't care. What's "fantabulous"? Why is it "fantabulous" that I should care what "fantabulous" is? It's just a fatuous term that refers to nothing.
>Would you say that "it is OK to rape and torture little girls for fun" is open for "conversation"?
Absolutely. And the conversation goes something like this:
1. Why isn't it moral to rape and torture little girls?
2. Because that system of interaction isn't consented to by all adult parties.
3. Oh. Right.
That's the difference between "conversation stopper" and "conversation resolver", or "actual argument" and "argument from authority".
***
>(ME) would you like it if such an objective standard were to be formulated, without recourse to supernatural claims about any particular god? (YOU) No, I don't suppose I'd like it, but it wouldn't be the death knell for my position.
Are you seriously saying you would be displeased by advances in moral understanding because it would rob your religious beliefs of their latest argument-from-ignorance defense? I *hope* you'll take issue with this characterisation, but don't see how.
I mean, I was being charitable when I asked how you'd feel to have the burden of defining morality taken from your religion's shoulders. For you to be *un*happy about the formulation of a standard for objective moral truth, you'd need to acknowledge that:
1. religion never was, in fact, the basis of moral truth, and
2. you'd rather people suffer in ignorance than lose an inaccurate defense.
>I am a seeker of truth above all.
Uh huh.
***
>(ME)I do *not* accept the apparent implication that my resulting system is entirely random and variable (YOU) OK, then what prevents it from being random and variable?
What I meant, and maybe should have said, was, my moral system is observably not random: there are regularities in it that correspond to the regularities in others' moral systems. What causes these regularities is, of course, the heart of discussion 1.
>How about that everyone is wrong? Have you ever considered that?
Sure, in much broader terms than morality. See discussion 2.
***
>(ME)It may be fine on your end - but (JESUS' 'ATONEMENT') )is, still, scapegoat human sacrifice.(YOU)Yes, it is.
I appreciate your candour. I invite you to post "only a religion of scapegoat human sacrifice can provide a standard of morality" on your blog header.
***
>What you don't seem to realise is that all moral questions reduce to questions of authority and normativity. Who has the right to tell you what to do? there's no "argument" to be made, in the sense you seem to mean it. 
You seem to have reached a spade turn moment almost immediately upon touching dirt.

Maximum Awesome said...

>He's not above His own laws.
>The law is: Don't unjustifiably put people to death.
>God is always justified in putting anyone to death whenever He wants. You and other humans are not so justified.
?
The idiom "above the law" means "exempt from the laws that apply to everyone else."
The condition you've described for god is *exactly* "above the law".
But I think our confusion over this issue comes down, again, to your definition of morality as simply "all the rules that apply to us", whereas my definition has to do with "a coherent system of interaction". This is a point Damion understood better than I did.
But if morality is just a set of rules that god needn't follow, how can those rules be said to originate from his nature? How can he be said to be in accordance with them in any sense if he's simply empowered to ignore them?
***
>(YOU)Both of these examples are of people misunderstanding the biblical text, not a change in the text itself. 
Well, yeah. Isn't that what I said?
>(ME)I realise you think the bible, per se, is infallible - but would you agree that interpretations of it improve over time? Evolving, becoming truer to its intent?
And okay, I accept your distinction of yourself from catholics. Fair enough. But I'm actually surprised that you didn't agree that interpretations get better - would you not say medieval bible readers (avoiding terms like "christian" - I realise you differentiate yourself), en masse, had interpretations different from those you and other modern bible-readers share? Would you not say access to more information, more arguments, helps you make a better study of the bible and be more true to it?
My argument, you see, was not that the bible has different interpretations, and is therefore wrong - my argument was that our moral understanding generally improves over time, just as our understanding of the bible does.
***

Maximum Awesome said...

This next spot is where I feel you've missed my point the hardest - almost as if I were arguing in morse code on a dog whistle:
>Yes, I hear this a lot, but it always stalls out when one introduces different "if"s, thus demonstrating that the non-Christian has an unstated, underlying moral standard.
Mine is not unstated. I stated it. Several times. MAX 1: "A moral system is good to the degree that it produces mutual agreeability amongst adult parties". Or, more generally, "a moral system is good to the degree it enables mutually agreeable cooperation."
>Now, the real morality to which you hold (ie, "What I like is what is moral") will rise up and say "Hey, those are not good 'if's!" thus showing that you don't really believe this if-then thing you're professing here.
I don't see why an invalid if invalidates ifs. "If" we want to catch a cold, we "ought" to lick doorknobs. Does that invalidate hygiene?

>(ME) If reason is enough to provide us with principles to rule out genocide, rape, etc (YOU)Studying 20th-century history should be enough to disabuse anyone of the notion that it is.
1. The 20thC was not the perfect embodiment of reason, anymore than the RCs are perfect embodiments of your idea of christianity.
2. Even though it wasn't perfect...
"http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html
According to anthropologists like Lawrence Keeley, Stephen LeBlanc, Phillip Walker, and Bruce Knauft ... If the wars of the twentieth century had killed the same proportion of the population that die in the wars of a typical tribal society, there would have been two billion deaths, not 100 million. "
... it didn't do too badly, compared to how things used to be. Read the article too: people "get along" more effectively all the time (whether you consider people getting along to be moral or not).

Maximum Awesome said...

>(ME)maybe "ought" is just a grammatical conjugation, not a fact of reality? (YOU)Tell that to a family whose daughter was just raped and murdered. You can't live that out, so who am I to agree with it if you don't?
I don't know how you could misinterpret me this badly on a rational level. What did you think I said? I've spent all this time trying to establish 1. we agree that rape and murder are "bad", and 2. there should be an objective basis for us to say it's "bad", and after all that time, you think ... what? I was saying rape and murder are just fine? What?
To make it even weirder, you use my "if" to make your argument: the reason aggression is bad is *because of the dissatisfaction of the victims*. By arguing based on humans' experiences, and not god's hissy fit or whatever, you're implicitly accepting my "if" in a much stronger way than I could ever have been said to have accepted your "oughts".
But to some degree I may be to blame for expressing myself incompletely. So what I was really saying, was that "ought" is grammatical in the sense that it depends on how a truth is phrased. If I say "the wall is white", I'm also saying that "you ought to see the wall as white, if you want your eyesight to be in accordance with reality": if I say "2+2=4", I'm saying "you ought to find 2+2 to equal 4, if you want to practice mathematics."
And, again, "if" you want the benefits of civilisation, you "ought" to behave in ways conducive to it.
COMMENTS SECTION:
>Yes, the reason they are superior is b/c they come from God, Who is the definition of goodness in and of Himself. 
In what sense is he the definition of goodness if he does things that aren't "good" (scapegoat human sacrifice)?
>Why didn't Max Awe use that kind of if, the more brutal kind, when making his case? Why did he default to what's 'nicer', 'fluffier'? 
Can't speak for Damion, but I didn't use it because ... why would I want to do brutal things? My understanding of morality has always been "rules to help people get along", and that's what I want to reify in objective terms: a way for everyone participating in the system to be the "authority" as to what's "good".

Maximum Awesome said...

Just to make sure I get this across this time:

>he (secular moralist)chooses the (moral option) that feels the best to him and gets him closer to his goal - a peaceful, ordered society - without telling us whether it is possible to know whether such SHOULD be our goal.

Why is morality any more beholden to "should" than hygiene is beholden to "should"?

If you want infected wounds and diseases, don't wash your hands.

If you want to be (short term/personal) arrested, deported, executed, etc, and also want to (long term/collective) contribute to a world bereft of the possibility of cooperation - and hence also division of labour, technology, free time, security, group affiliation, etc - don't be moral.

Why does morality suffer more for the lack of "ought" built into the fabric of reality than hygiene does?

zilch said...

Max and Rho- before you agree that "objective morality" is desirable, you might want to define it carefully and show that it exists. As I and others have argued many times here before, there's no compelling reason to believe that "objective morality" exists in any useful way, or that it is necessary to us.

Maximum Awesome said...

Zilch - not sure what you mean. Have you got a link?

zilch said...

Max- Here's one. As you can see, Rho does not ever define what he means by "objective", or "morality", or "value", but simply repeats over and over that we atheists can have no objective moral values (whatever they might be), and that we are thus logically enjoined from expressing any moral opinions at all. As I pointed out, and Rho had no answer to this, this is just like saying that since one cannot define what is "objectively good to eat" (or can you?), then there's no logical reason not to feed your kids plutonium.

zilch said...

Sorry, that link seems to be broken. I hope this one will do.