Posted on 03/19/2010 1:04:09 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
God is dead, so why should I be good? The answer is that there are no grounds whatsoever for being good. There is no celestial headmaster who is going to give you six (or six billion, billion, billion) of the best if you are bad. Morality is flimflam.
Does this mean that you can just go out and rape and pillage, behave like an ancient Roman grabbing Sabine women? Not at all. I said that there are no grounds for being good. It doesn't follow that you should be bad. Indeed, there are those – and I am one – who argue that only by recognising the death of God can we possibly do that which we should, and behave properly to our fellow humans and perhaps save the planet that we all share. We can give up all of that nonsense about women and gay people being inferior, about fertilised ova being human beings, and about the earth being ours to exploit and destroy.
Start with the fact that humans are naturally moral beings. We want to get along with our fellows. We care about our families. And we feel that we should put our hands in our pockets for the widows and orphans. This is not a matter of chance or even of culture primarily. Humans as animals have gone the route of sociality. We succeed, each of us individually, because we are part of a greater whole and that whole is a lot better at surviving and reproducing that most other animals.
On the one hand, we have suppressed all sorts of common mammalian features that disrupt harmonious living. Imagine trying to run a philosophy class if two or three of the members were in heat.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Sure there is. It's called competition. It was either him or us. Survival dictates it. Why is survival important? I don't know. It seems to be an atavistic genetic memory that is common to all species of animalia: they tend to run away or fight in order to survive or prevail.
What is a mind? Is it a "thing?" You ask what is thinking. It's biochemical, electrical and other activity.
Logic is based on what people learned about the real world, how things relate to each other. It shows how one thing leads to another.Without the real world experience, no logic would be possible.
Are you saying that moral virtues are genetic, a random concatenation of atoms and molecules? Is the fundamental difference between Jesus of Nazareth and Adolf Hitler their genetic makeup? Well if that's the case, then what sense does praise or blame make?
Further, how does a mere description of genetic memory common to all species of animalia, by which they tend to run away or fight in order to survive or prevail explain morality or moral incumbency; i.e., what ought or ought not be done? Is there some moral obligation for a species to survive? How could that be, since there evolution has no purpose? And if there are moral obligations prior to evolution, then evolution itself can't be their source, and you are just presupposing what is supposed to be explained. Descriptions of animal behavior conditioned by the environment for survival can never account for the prescriptive nature of morality.
You stated in #126 that "morality exists..." And yet in #197 you stated to Texas Songwriter,
Now if we begin with a premise that murder is evil and that killing someone is murder, then it follows that murder is evil, but doesn't prove it because the premise is not based on objective truth. Objective evil requires that you demonstrate that there is an object that is evil by nature. No such object can be demonstrated.If, as you say on one hand, there is no objective evil, then how can you say morality exists on the other? Isn't that a contradiction? Help me out here.
Cordially,
WOW. No laws of logic. You refuse to deal with reason or rational thought.
So, mind is biochemical, electrical and other activity. So you say mind is biochemical activity. Mind = biochemical, electrical and other activity? Is mind the compex of neurons in the cerebral cortex or amigdyala or another residence of the organ. People with cortical hemispherectomies have thoughts, and are persons. Gee, mind = biochemical, electrical activies,... that sound a little vague.
The point I am trying to make is that you are straining at a gnat trying to explain away an abstract entity because of your a priori commitment to materialism, but you know that entities which are nonmaterial exist, as I have pointed out, but pride will not allow you to declare what you indeed know.
So I ask", Is logic material or immaterial?
Is reason material or immaterial?
Is mind (not the organ the brain, but mind) material or immaterial?
Is love material or immaterial? I could go on, but you get my drift. You don't have to write back to answer,...both you and I already know the answer to my question.
I hope you will think on some of my comments, perhaps consider them. I have read enough of your other posts to know you are intelligient. If you assimilate the Transcendental Argument for the existence of God and think on these things for a while, perhaps we might talk again. I am always trying to learn something. I did't discuss these matters with you to get crosswise, but to try to get you to learn and try to learn from you. If you just allow logic, reason and rational thought to guide you in these matters, you will arrive at a place where you will discover that you can dispense, for the most part, with presuppositions throwing up roadblocks. That took me a while to get past too. Now all I want to know is what is true, regarding these matters. Best of luck to you Kosta.
No, moral virtues are learned. Morality is a product of human culture, not nature.
Is there some moral obligation for a species to survive?
Apparently not, because it is common to all species of animalia, including man. Survival is a biological desire, not a moral obligation.
If, as you say on one hand, there is no objective evil, then how can you say morality exists on the other? Isn't that a contradiction?
There is no contraditiction. Morality exists as a social convention. That's why different cultures have different moral standards. For evil to be objective one would have to identify it as an object that is in itself evil, i.e. the Evil One.
We can say that an act is objectively evil (injurious, destructive, etc.) , but not that there is objective essential evil, unless you can produce the Evil One in person.
I think you misinterpreted what I said. I am saying that laws of logic do not exist sui generis, but as product of human experience and learning based on relationships observed in the material world.
So, mind is biochemical, electrical and other activity
Yes. It is a term that describes brain activity.
but you know that entities which are nonmaterial exist
They exist as human definitions, not as objective realities.
So I ask", Is logic material or immaterial? Is reason material or immaterial?
Logic is a collective term for a method and not an independent reality.
Is love material or immaterial?
At the risk of sounding corny, I ask you what is love? There are probably more than 6 billion definitions on this planet...one for each human being.
I did't discuss these matters with you to get crosswise, but to try to get you to learn and try to learn from you.
I didn't take it that way. Both you and Diamond are very civil and I appreciate that. However, I cannot simply for the sake of civility agree that there are all these immaterial "entities" floating around when they are clearly collective terms for our physiological activity or methods.
A large number, perhaps a majority, of philosophical naturalists hold that naturalism does not sit well with irreducible sui generis mental properties/events and advocate the strong form of physicalism. However there is growing dissatisfaction with the various forms of strong phyiscalism (as you assert), and are breaking ranks with those who are strong physicalism devotees and are venturing into emergent property dualism (Kim), at least for phenomenal conciousness. My assertion that logic, rational thought, reason, and consciousness are irreducible and provide evidence for the existence of God. If irreducible consciousness exists, as I believe it does, then this provides evidence for the existence of God. Nothwithstanding protestations from the materialist, physicalist denial, consciousness is not reducible to biochemistry or electrical potentials. Science provides virtually no evidence at all for storng physicalism and, in fact, the central issues at the core of the mind/body problem are philosophical, not scientific. Science cannot justify strong physicalism. Consciousness and perception are scientifically and evolutionarliy inexplicable by mechanical causes. Materialism fails to provide an answer for cause of consciousness or mental events. As McGinn asked: "How did mere matter orignate consciousness. How did evolution convert the water of biological tissue into the wine of consciousness?" "Conciousness seems to be a radical novelty in the universe...how did it spring from what preceeded it?"
Crispin Wright said, "A central dilemma in contemporary metaphysics is to find a place for certain anthropocentric subject-matters-for instance, semantic, moral, and psychological-in a world as conceived by modern naturalists: a stance which inflates the concepts and categories deployed by (finished) physical science into a metaphysics of the kind of thing the real world esentially and exhaustively is. On one horn if we embrace this naturalism, it seems we are committed either to reductionism: that is, to a construal of the reference of, for example, semantic, moral and psychological vocabulary as somehow being within the physical domain - or to disputing that the discourses in quesiton involve reference to what is real at all. On the other horn, if we reject this naturalism, then we accept that there is more to the world than can be embraced within a physicalist ontology - and so take on a commitment, as can seem, to a kind of eerie supernaturalism." Thus we constantly find physcalist, materialist say, this is wrong, this is right, darwinianism is true. Right, wrong, truth cannot exist in a stong physicalist, materialist world. So yes, more generally, you argue while certain features of consiousness, logic, or other mental events - construed as sui generis and which are clearly non-phycical - may be inexplicable on a naturalist worldview, they however, are easily explained by the theists worldview, thereby furnishing evidence for the existence of God.
Evolution is a biological theory, not a moral theory. A theory of rights and morals is required to make such a determination.
"There is no "diabolical" in what was, if Darwinism were true, just another historical development of matter in motion."
Are you saying you're incapable of coming up with a theory of rights and morals, simply because a biological theory is true?
Tell that to Michael Ruse, the author of the article. The title of the thread is God is dead. Long live morality (Evolutionist says Morality is fashioned by natural selection).
In the article atheist Michael Ruse asserts that morality is something forged in the struggle for existence and reproduction, something fashioned by natural selection.
One of the problems with this view is that morality is prescriptive, not merely descriptive. It tells us not just what we did, but what we ought to have done in the past, and what we ought to do in the future. That is something can’t even, in principle, be explained by any evolutionary materialistic system because nothing about my biology can impose on me any incumbency to act a certain way for moral reasons in the future. It doesn’t tell me why I should be good tomorrow. Ruse admits as much right off the bat by answering the question of why should I be good tomorrow with, "there are no grounds whatsoever for being good." He then spends the rest of the article trying to smuggle morality in through the back door.
Cordially,
That seems contradictory on the face of it, save for your distinguishing of "essential". So what does your distinction between "objective evil" and "objective essential evil" mean?
When you say that that a particular an act is objectively evil are you describing the action itself, the object? Are you saying that the object, whatever it is, has a quality of being wrong, and therefore, wherever that act goes, the wrongness follows it, just like your hair or baldness, or whatever, is an objective quality of you, and follows you wherever you go? Does the wrongness follow the act? If it’s an objective quality of the act, then it does. And in that case it doesn’t matter what people think about it, or what society says, or what your evolutionary conditioning is - the act is still wrong. The other alternative is that you’re not talking about the act. You’re talking about yourself. You’re talking about your genetic conditioning. You’re talking about your society's conventions about that kind of thing. And if that’s the case, then the truth of the wrongness of the act is not objective but merely in the individual or the subject.
Cordially,
Thx for your kind reply.
“Die in a rainstorm out of amazement”... *LOL*.
Do you start to sigh when you have been waiting too long? I do,especially when I’m on the Wal-Mart pharmacy line.
Something to really think about,at least for me.I love science.The universe fascinates me.
Good Lord!
Took a good long search to remind myself what I said ... (almost a week ago!)
By the way - Boothe is an excellent actor.
I just love PB to death.Have you seen him in “Guyana Tragedy”? What a performance he gave as Jim Jones. A bonus is that he loves this country!
Another thing I’d like to add:I can see idiots dying from amazement during a tornado while they’re out there filming one.
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