Helping @dreamspeak with consistency - 2

So @dreamspeak decided to show up and talk after all.
I'm glad, honestly; Twitter is not a sufficient forum for discussing difficult topics with any depth.


Perhaps here I could refute your asinine claims more thoroughly than on Twitter

By which you no doubt mean "perhaps here I could start to refute your asinine claims". You didn't do any of that on Twitter.
Just a reminder.



you can declare unilateral victory in your little echo chamber without the benefit of an actual back-and-forth debate

Your amazing blindness to the irony of this statement is stunning.
Did I not invite you numerous times to comment here?  Don't be so melodramatic.


Empathy -noun: 1.
the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

Yes, quite so.


Projection -noun (psychology)
a. the belief, esp in children, that others share one's subjective mental life

Yes, quite so.



Imagining what someone else's experiences might be and realizing that pain inflicted on others is a negative

Whoa whoa whoa, stop right there.
Here you've skipped right past the big question that I've been getting at.  You don't seem to get that I want an answer to this, so let me make it easily accessible to you: How do you know that pain inflicted on others is a negative?



is not the same thing as imagining that your desires are the same as everyone else's

How can I or anyone else know the feelings of another, except by comparing it to one's own feelings?
It's identification with the feelings of another.
Anyway, without your connecting the dots between "inflicted pain" and "negative"/"morally wrong", this goes nowhere for you.



It's the difference between seeing someone in pain and knowing what that feels like and wishing FOR THAT PERSON to feel no pain versus thinking everyone thinks the way you do and perceives the world the way you do.

The funny thing is, as I pointed out, you do the exact same thing in imagining that most ppl think about pain the way you do and therefore thinking that you know what's morally correct.



FURTHER; it is important to note that on many levels MOST humans experience the world similarly

You have no idea whether that's true. Where are your exhaustive study and survey results?


I can IDENTIFY in someone else a feeling that I MYSELF would not wish upon them

Hmm, sounds like you're "projecting", and therefore doing exactly what you're criticising in me.


HOWEVER I have never suggested that NO HUMANS EVER have aberrant or abnormal inner lives

Good, now take it to the next step. Deal with the fact that "abnormal" and "aberrant" are merely statistical terms, with no necessary bearing on morality. Connect the dots for us.
How do you know the "normal" is right and the "abnormal" is wrong? So far you've merely begged that question.


which is why I said that it is a COLLECTIVE result of society

You've asserted such, yes, but not given any reason to think it's true or meaningful.
Tkalim's society thinks it's morally obligatory to kidnap, rape, torture, and kill little girls from the nearby city. Presumably you can make no moral objection to that.  If you do forward an objection, how are you consistent with what you've just said?
I'd like to know how you know what the contract is; who signed it; if no one signed it, how you know who agreed to it; how one agrees to it; and what % of the population is required before it's a contract?  Thanks.

Also, it might do you some good to read this, so as to avoid stepping in even more old cowpies.


the levels of empathy that are required for EVERY level of moral or ethical behavior

Naked assertion. What's the argument?


This is why we condemn the Columbine shooters rather than excuse them.

They were scattering protoplasm. I see no reason to think there was anything wrong with what they did, if atheism is true.


We recognize their behavior as immoral because it causes pain in the victims and survivors that we wish on no one.

Don't say "we" w/o citing your sources.
Say "that *I* wish on no one".  But then you need to tell us why we should care what you think.


Neither I would ever suggest that we have a perfect solution

That's a start. The next step is realising you in fact have no solution at all unless you can answer my challenges.

Helping @dreamspeak with consistency

Here I'd like to review a tweetversation I've been having with @dreamspeak.
It all began when someone else referenced #atheisthotline about how evil a position I hold is, or something, and I said:
@Rhology also challenges #atheisthotline to demonstrate that ANYthing is objectively morally wrong.

@dreamspeak then jumped in and asked why anyone would need to do that. What emerged from what followed was that this individual believes that our morality should be based on empathy that people have for each other. I have of course dealt with this at length beforehand, and I linked him to that article, but surprise surprise, he doesn't appear to have read it.
I proceeded to perform a reductio ad absurdum on his assertion:


Rhology: @mysickbones Empathy-I prefer pain myself so figure others like pain too. @dreamspeak bases morality on empathy. Ergo infliction of pain=OK

dreamspeak: @Rhology You are a moron. You keep assuming that an individual is what defines morality. It is a collective bargain, agreement in society.

Rhology: @dreamspeak It is a collective bargain, agreement in society>>How do you know?

dreamspeak: @Rhology I read studies of human behavior. Professional scientific analysis of sociology, psychology, even animal behavior for comparison.

Now, let's stop for a moment to take stock.
He didn't answer the question, first of all.  Also, he conveniently forgets that societies are composed of individuals. And "studies of human behavior" are just that - compilations of studies of individuals. Also, as I pointed out to him, this is an is, not an ought. What ought follows from this is?

dreamspeak: Seems @Rhology's primary problem is that what he thinks is empathy, is actually called "projecting."

Rhology: @dreamspeak's primary problem is that what he thinks is empathy, is actually called "what I like". As if everyone is always like him.

Rhology: @dreamspeak How do you get from "X behaved thusly and thought thusly about it" to "X's behavior was morally unjustified"?

dreamspeak @Rhology I don't know how to explain it to you in a way that will breach your thick skull. You keep returning to this because you're stuck.


dreamspeak @Rhology Empathy will never be "what I like" no matter how many times you insist that it is, and I've never used it to mean that.


dreamspeak @Rhology If you could be less stupid for a moment and think about what "empathy" means you would see that it informs how we treat others.


dreamspeak @Rhology The majority of humanity does not enjoy suffering, and through empathy can "get" what it means to inflict it, & want to lessen it.

Note here how he just two tweets ago denied that empathy reduces to "what I like" and then here says that "the majority of humanity does not enjoy suffering".  So it sure seems to me that he has gone back on what he said earlier, seemingly without realising it.
If you don't enjoy suffering, and that's your argument for why one shouldn't do something, then no matter how many times you deny it, it does come down to what you like and what you dislike.
His lame point about "projecting" is precisely what he is guilty of. When one empathises with someone else, one is attempting to understand an experience. @dreamspeak is telling us to ask ourselves whether we enjoy pain. He assumes most will say, "No, I don't like pain." He'll then go on to say, "OK, so don't inflict pain."
But what if someone does enjoy pain? Then the answer would be, "Yes, I do like pain." If @dreamspeak is to be consistent, he should answer "OK, so inflict pain," b/c he wants us to act on our empathy.
This is what he has not grasped.

If he objects that most people don't like pain, he is moving the goalposts, b/c he was telling us that empathy is the basis, and now he wants us to listen to the majority. This is nothing more than might making right, morality by popularity. The obvious question is whether @dreamspeak is willing to say that about 1940s-era Jews in Germany, France, and Poland. The majority thought they were better off dead or in labor camps. Guess it was the right thing to do.
Thus he shows that he doesn't really think that empathy is the basis for morality. He thinks that thinking like he thinks is the basis.  But he hasn't scanned and uploaded his Pope of Morality ID badge yet.

dreamspeak: @Rhology If you can't even understand what it means to imagine someone else's suffering then you can't get past this part.


dreamspeak @Rhology So you can stop acting like you're making any kind of sensible point here. You're not. People are reasonable & empathetic creatures

Some people are reasonable, sometimes.  Most people are at least some of the time. Nobody is reasonable all the time. Further, he is living in a fantasy realm filled with unicorns and butterflies.  "People are empathetic creatures"?  Without qualification? 

There are sociopaths out there, @dreamspeak. Are they "empathetic" (by which he means, of course, "people who think like I think")? Murderers, pædophiles, thieves, addicts, rapists... all of those are out there.  Do they consult their empathy before committing what some of us consider to be criminal acts?
And what if they grew to outnumber the "good, reasonable, empathetic" people?  Since might makes right, I suppose morality would change, wouldn't it?

As the ironically-named @PlzThinkHarder said to me: yesterday it was immoral for a woman to speak out of turn. Today it is not. Tomorrow could hold anything. It's human nature.

I just swap in different objects and my point is made.  

Yesterday it was immoral to commit genocide. Today it is not. Tomorrow could hold anything. It's human nature.

Yesterday it was immoral to rape little girls. Today it is not. Tomorrow could hold anything. It's human nature.

Yesterday it was immoral to hunt down and kill all atheists. Today it is not. Tomorrow could hold anything. It's human nature.

Yesterday it was immoral to enslave all non-Christians. Today it is not. Tomorrow could hold anything. It's human nature.

What answer does an atheistic outlook have to any of this?

Now, if this is your first time seeing this kind of argument, or if you need a reminder, please know that I do not actually hold any of these conclusions. They are consistent with an atheistic, naturalistic outlook, but I am not an atheistic naturalist.  I am a biblical Christian.

B/c God has spoken and has authority, I know that these things are objectively evil. But how can the atheist know any of that? There is no authority, no normative standard.  Who says that we must obey or consider our empathy when weighing moral options? Why should we?  Who is @dreamspeak to tell us to do that?  If we disobey, will he punish us? If he had the power, would he enforce such?  What authority does he have? 

Hopefully he'll stop by to let us all know who crowned him Pope.

Empathy and morality

Probably the most important element of morality is the question of how one is supposed to treat other people. Christianity has a very strong and, actually, kind of easy answer to the question. I've discussed the Christian answer to that question before, so today I want to deal with a common atheist's answer now.

Martin at the Atheist Experience has echoed other atheists I've talked to in claiming that his basis for morality is "empathy, altruism and reason". Let's check those in turn to see how they actually perform as far as giving us moral standards by which we know how we SHOULD, or OUGHT TO, treat others.

Reason:

I'll grant this - Reason can tell us how we should act in order to reach a desired end.
For example, I don't want to go to jail in my lifetime. There is a set of laws defining what is non-meritorious-of-jail behavior. I employ reason so as to know what will not land me in jail.
But reason can only go so far - it cannot inform a decision about what is good and what is bad. It cannot tell me what SHOULD be. It can tell me what IS and how to achieve desired ends, but cannot tell me what I should desire.
Reason is helpful when a moral system is already in place. I personally employ reason in order to help me understand how to apply the ought that I already know from a moral system outside of myself (Christianity).

If I desire peace with my fellow man, reason can inform my behavior. If I desire war with my fellow man, or to rape a child and get away with it, it can inform my behavior just as well as in the former case. Stated differently, reason can tell me what IS, not what OUGHT TO BE.


Empathy and altruism:

This sounds good at first, true. Or, I should say, it sounds good to modern, Western ears. One could certainly make the argument (as others have done before) that such values as intrinsic human rights and empathy (based on the Golden Rule) are in place in the West largely b/c of the pervasive influence of Christianity. Many other societies thru time have not held to these moral principles, but that is not the main point here.

The major problem for the one who would claim this position is that moral questions almost always deal with the question of how to deal with other people, or how to judge between actions done by one person towards another. Thus the 'empathetimoralist atheist' (EMA) begs the question. Here's why.

Timothy McVeigh stops his Ryder truck in front of the Murrah building, starts the timer, and leaves the area. You are a cop who've been sniffing him out, you know what's in the truck, you see him fiddle with sthg in the cab and then duck into the getaway car (driven by Iraqi soldiers, by the way). You now have a choice - exercise empathy for the innocents and children inside the building and disarm the bomb and apprehend McVeigh, or exercise empathy for McVeigh rather than for the innocents and children inside the building?

The EMA may answer alternatively: "But it's obvious! We can't harm people, especially innocent children."
or
"Harming people is immoral."
or
"Would YOU want to be blown up undeservedly?"

But that is a SHOULD statement. The EMA is begging the very question at hand - with whom SHOULD we have empathy? The criminal or the victim? Why SHOULD we label "harming another person" as "bad"?
More than once, I've asked these questions and gotten the response: "If you think that it's not self-evident that harming innocent people is morally wrong, I can't help you." Interestingly, that's as deep as any atheist has ever yet gotten with my line of questioning, and he ended it by begging the question mercilessly (and then bludgeoning it with a shovel).
He didn't answer it, nor did he attempt to. Nor could he answer how we can know that we SHOULD be empathetic towards the inflictEE of harm rather than the inflictOR.
The EMA has taken it upon himself to act like God and to attempt to impose his morality on others. It is as if he were on the mountaintop and wrote on the stone tablets "Thou shalt usually have empathy on the victim."
Of course, if atheism is true, there is no Lawgiver, and I have equal authority to the EMA. His pronouncements have no binding power on me. He prefers to have empathy for the children in the bldg. Maybe I choose to have empathy for McVeigh. If I were McVeigh, I wouldn't want to be caught, imprisoned, and executed! I should let him get away!

Or we might hear: "This does not contribute to an ordered and peaceful society."

Here the EMA retreats to his provisional "IF ordered and peaceful society is that which is desired, then we should act this way", but that also begs the question. Perhaps I have empathy for McVeigh's vision of society.
Given the bare and solitary criterion of empathy, I have no way to choose what to do. I'm reduced to instinct, gut feeling, my personal preference. Where have we heard that before?

This is pretty counterintuitive stuff, since most everyone in the West holds to an almost identical set of basic moral codes, but I'm asking you to think a little more deeply about it.
Here's the key to why the EMA is stuck in this rut: he knows deep inside that harming innocents gratuitously is objectively, morally wrong, independently of whether anyone believes it or not. It is viscerally disconcerting to him to think of murdering a child, or bombing a building. So, though his worldview provides for no way to know whether
1) to be empathetic toward the bomber
2) to be empathetic toward the victim
3) to be empathetic at all
is the right way to go, he chooses the one 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.

In reality Christianity is true, and God has put this desire in people's hearts. "He has bound eternity in the hearts of men" (Ecclesiastes); "they show that the requirements of the Law are written on their hearts, their consciences alternately accusing, now even defending them" (Romans 2). The EMA has no evidence that it is truly the case that his moral dogmas are right for anyone other than himself. But he acts like they are b/c he is borrowing from a theistic worldview, where a transcendent Lawgiver exists and has given commands for people to follow. He rejects the Lawgiver but wants the Laws (airbrushed to fit his own desires, of course). This is a common human theme - we reject the Giver but want the gifts. We want His power but not His face. We want His mercy but not to strive to be worthy of it.

So the EMA has only a few logical, consistent courses of action open to him:
1) Repent of his sin and trust Jesus Christ as Savior, thus taking on the true foundation for morals as his own. This is the best option.
2) Stop making moral claims or requirements on anyone else. Also, stop calling actions "despicable", "reprehensible", "evil", "horrible", etc.

Making long chains of question-begging assertions and bluster is not one of those.


For further illustration of this point, see the Douglas Wilson-Dan Barker debate. Wilson follows this line of questioning aggressively and gets about as far as I got, only his opponent is a professional debater and atheist activist.