Imagine my surprise when I heard that atheism was based on a search for truth. We all know that’s false.
Let’s examine a couple recent examples.
Patrick claimed that I did not provide any links.
You’ll note the complete absence of any links…
I provided links. Patrick lied.
KN claimed that Immanuel Kant was an atheist philosopher.
KN lied,
Patrick demands morals of others while denying that there are any objective moral obligations.
Why do atheists care about what is true and what is immoral?
Why do atheists attack the object of their ignorance?
Ah, good point.
Glen Davidson
How many?
What was your sample size?
Bullshit. Bullshit and poppycock.
There’s never even the semblance of argument for any of these extravagant claims. It’s always the same old story: these are “necessary presuppositions”, and their necessity is always supposed to be “self-evident” except to those moral degenerates who deny them.
It’s a very neat and tidy little scheme for deciding who is going to be allowed to play in the sandbox of reasonable discourse. It’s utterly self-serving, bullying, and despicable.
For the record, I think that all of WJM’s claims are false: norms do not depend on purposes; purposes do not depend on an external purposive-giver; objective morality does not depend on an external purposive-giver; and responsiveness to norms does not require counter-causal or libertarian freedom.
Rather, as quite a few philosophers have argued, purposiveness or goal-having is a constitutive property of living things because they need to maintain both organizational closure and thermodynamic openness with their surroundings. Teleological normativity does not require positing an intelligent designer or creator of any kind. (Side-note: it is precisely on this point that Aristotle disagrees with Plato. There is nothing in the Aristotelian metaphysics that corresponds to the Demiurge of Plato’s Timaeus. The Unmoved Mover is not a designer.)
To be sure, there are interesting questions here about the evolution of morality in primates and hominids, about the emergence of discursive normativity from teleological normativity, about how to naturalize reason, and about how to recognize that “the neurobiology of self-control” (as Pat Churchland calls it) does everything that ‘free will’ was supposed to do.
And there also interesting conceptual questions, such as in what sense is morality objective? (I myself think of ‘objective’ as what Sellars calls ‘an accordion word’ — it’s meaning is stretched and bent to fit into different positions, and thereby much philosophical music is made.) There are perfectly good senses of ‘objective’ in which morality is not objective, and also perfectly good senses of ‘objective’ in which morality is objective.
But there’s no reason to believe that our self-conception as rational animals, governed by objective moral and epistemic norms, requires anything like classical theism or any variant.
Though I seem to be the only participant at TSZ who is a moral realist and not a traditional theist. Make of that what you will.
I’m going to take a page from fifthmonarchyman’s book and declare myself the essential atheist. The rest of you are shadows on the walls of the cave.
I agree with every single thing you go on to say there. Wonderfully stated.
William, replace what I said with that and respond accordingly 😛
I’m not sure that I would agree. I give credit to William for agreeing to comment here where discussions aren’t halted (or controlled) by the use of comment deletion, editing, or silently banning. Something that cowards like Barry, Gordon KairosFocus Mullings, and BA77 are afraid to do. This makes the discussion here very different than at UD, which was my intended point.
This being said, I have seen a few commenters at UD disappear after William tosses out the “troll” accusation. I am not accusing William of actually doing the banning, but he has surely seen the correlation.
I’ve noticed FMM seems to be taking a similar tack.
Heh, yeah. Well I think it’s really just chance in this case, the sample here is too small. How many are we that post regularly here? 10-15 atheists and 5-8 theists?
William J. Murray,
Arcatia said:
“He keeps claiming that objective morality is fact and can’t be effectively disputed.
William responded:
“More evidence of either bad logic or cognitive bias. I’ve never claimed that objective morality is a fact. I don’t know what “effectively disputed” means.”
I am not going to search all of your comments to see if you ever claimed that objective morality is a fact. However, it is fair to say that you have always asserted that it is essential. The fact that you don’t know what “effectively disputed” means sadly speaks volumes.
Acartia said:
“Yet he has repeatedly failed to explain how this can be true when fundamental morals are different between cultures, are different within cultures over time, and change for individuals over time.”
William responded:
I’ve answered this every time anyone brings it up:”
Sorry, I should have stated that you have never answer this in any way that makes sense. Essentially you are saying that objective morality exists, but that it is subjective. That is like saying that ID exists but that it is indistinguishable from natural evolution. And you claim that I suffer from
either bad logic or cognitive bias.
“Universal agreement is not required in order for a thing to have objective existence. ”
Agreed. But there would be some evidence of its objective existence. Until evidence is found, a claim for something’s objective existence is little more than a guess, or a personal preference.
The only thing that can be said to be objective about morality is that it exists. Beyond that, all arguments to demonstrate the existence of specific objective fundamental morals are little more than mental masturbation on a par with many of the ramblings of KF. If you want to actually provide some evidence to support your argument, we would surely love to hear it.
Yes. It’s an example of what I call “normative violence”: the idea that one regards oneself as having the sovereign right to determine who deserves to be recognized as an interlocutor in reasonable discourse.
If it is only on one’s own authority that others are recognized as fellow players of the game of giving and asking for reasons, then they cannot play any constitutive role in one’s own authority. The authority must therefore be self-granting and self-granted. But that is an incoherent idea, because no one has any authority except insofar as that authority is recognized by others. (In jargon, authority is intersubjectively constituted.)
There are many examples of intersubjectively constituted authority — say, the authority of being a doctor, or an expert, or a President. So the real point is that all authority is intersubjectively constituted. We all constitute each other as authorities when we recognize each other as playing the game of giving and asking for reasons.
But because we are equally authoritative, no one can ‘trump’ another player — any claim can be put into question, nothing is ‘self-evident’, there are no argumentative moves that must be accepted prior to being permitted to play the reason-giving game. And no one has the kind of authority that immunizes them from rational criticism (this is one of the deeper lessons to be learned from Plato).
There are questions here of how anyone becomes a player of the game of giving and asking for reasons, and also of how the very game itself came into being. The former is a question of cognitive developmental psychology; the second is a question of paleoanthropology.
No, bible study for me might be similar to the way you might read Dianetics, or the Koran, or the Book of Mormon, or Bullfinch.
Or tea leaves.
Glen Davidson
I have to wonder why nobody has brought up Euthyphro yet.
Good point. The Euthyphro is an excellent example of the kind of move that I see FMM and WJM as making.
Here some background may be useful. In classical Athens, there were multiple conceptions of “piety” (eusebia). It was pious to honor one’s parents, and pious to honor the gods, and pious to punish murderers. Punishing murders was part of ancient Greek piety because murder was considered a desecration that brought a collective guilt-punishment on the community (miasma that would persist until an act of cleansing or re-santification was performed (catharsis).
In Euthyphro, Plato carefully sets up a thought-experiment that reveals the tensions within these conceptions of piety. Here is Euthyphro, a priest, who is going to court to testify against his father. Doing so is an act of impiety. But his father is a murderer (or so it seems). In fact it is deeply ambiguous whether the father intended to kill — in the thought-experiment, Euthyhro’s father allowed a man to die of neglect who had killed someone else in a drunken rage.
So is Euthyphro acting piously because he is prosecuting a murderer, or impiously because he is prosecuting his father?
The dialectic with Socrates then begins with Euthyprho denying that there’s any ambiguity to the situation because he claims to know what piety really is. On Socratic questioning, it becomes clear that he’s not able to provide a satisfactory definition of piety, which in turn calls into question his epistemic authority as a priest. (If it is true that being able to provide a definition, distinct from examples, is a necessary condition of having justifiable true beliefs, as opposed to mere opinions or beliefs that are accidentally true. That Platonic assumption about knowledge has led to a few thousand years of interminable discussion.)
The dialogue ends with Euthyphro having been brought back to the position he initially rejected, at which point he claims that he could define piety correctly if he really wanted to — since that’s the only way he can maintain his self-conception as a priest with epistemic authority — but he simply doesn’t have the time. He leaves, with Socrates just as confused as before about what is pious, as Socrates enters the Assembly to answer for his crimes of impiety against Athens.
Just as Euthyphro dogmatically asserts that he knows what piety is, and those who are unable to understand him are ignorant fools (even after his definition has been subjected to internal criticism), so too FMM dogmatically asserts that one can have objective knowledge only if one assumes the existence of God and WJM dogmatically asserts that one can have objective morality only if one assumes the existence of an intelligent, purpose-conferring designer and libertarian freedom. In neither case are there arguments that hold up under close scrutiny.
Once again, simply stringing phrases together doesn’t mean you’ve said something that is actually possible or coherent. You can’t use the words “ought” and “is” any way you want to make any point you want. There is no “ought” without purpose, and the current state of a thing doesn’t tell you what one ought do unless there is a purpose that informs you what to do with or about that thing – what to use it for, or what to do about it.
It would be incorrect to say that god created humans “for” a purpose, and then think of humans like a pair of pliers that could also be used for some other purpose like hammering in a tack. It would be more correct to say that god created humans “with” a purpose. humans are sentient and have a conscience; they are not pliers. Which is why we virtually everyone knows that gratuitous child torture is morally wrong; humans are imbued with divine purpose and can sense their oughts and ought-nots through their conscience.
There is no dilemma in the kind of objective morality I argue for. In my argument, what is good is a fundamental, unalterable aspect of the nature of god. God cannot change what is good, and what is good is not forced upon god by something that is non-god.
Arcatia said:
Essential to what?
Well, I know what the terms mean, but I don’t see how the two words put together mean anything of value. Any idiot can disupte any claim or fact, but to do so “effectively” …. means what, exactly? How is the effectiveness of the dispute to be judged? The phrase doesn’t really mean much.
Nope. Not much I can do about this degree of cognitive bias. I’ve even given examples of things we hold as objectively existent conditions (gravity, sickness, weather, origin of life, etc.) which were described and believed to be wildly different things from culture to culture and from one time in history to another. It’s a fairly trivial fact that just because different people disagree on a thing doesn’t mean that thing doesn’t objectively exist. It just means they disagree. Some are right about some of it, some are wrong.
See, you even agree with my answer. Just because different cultures at different times disagree about what is moral doesn’t mean that morality is not objective.
It’s a good thing I’ve never claimed that objective morality exists, then.
Acartia,
I can’t ban people from UD, but I can make their posts disappear from threads there I author.
It would be incumbent upon me to provided evidence if I was claiming that objective morality factually existed. Good thing I’m not, and never have.
Yeah, no one cares, you keep on whining that people don’t accept it, run your idiotic argument from consequences, and are too gutless to step up and make an honest claim that there is objective morality.
You have no argument without evidence for objective morality, just a lot of moaning and complaining about others. The fact that you won’t make an honest argument is the problem, rather than something that gets you out of responsibility for honest discourse.
Glen Davidson
Everything I said made complete sense. I was reiterating a fundamental problem in philosophy, the is-ought problem.
It should come as a surprise to noone that you are apparently unfamiliar with this issue.
No, it wouldn’t. Purpose is not a property of anything. It is an idea in the minds of sentient beings, it doesn’t exist anywhere else. There is no thing that “has” purpose, there are only sentient beings that think of the thing that it is for something. But this is a fact about those sentient beings (they have those thoughts), it is not a fact about the thing (purpose is found nowhere in it).
And yet nothing follows from that, about what humans “ought” to do about anything. You cannot derive any oughts from merely listing properties of human beings. No, you’re not the first person to actually solve the is-ought problem, because you haven’t actually solved it. Nothing you’ve said here has accomplished anything other than asserting what I’m asking you to prove.
Cool story bro. Prove it.
Who defined goodness to be what god’s nature is? You did. So your morality is subjective.
Besides, it doesn’t solve the dilemma. Is god’s nature good because it is god’s (and what’s good about that?), or is it a good nature because it corresponds to something external?
…
By the way, quite the dishonest quotemine you effected there, cutting out right where I pointed out that your consequentialist BS won’t cut it, which I included because I’m well aware that you don’t play fair with the discussion, instead arguing for the “necessity” of something you’re too cowardly to claim as objective. Here’s the whole sentence that you quotemined:
Skipped the ellipse, too. As sleazy as I expect from you.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson said:
I’m responding to you claim that it is “incumbent upon me”. Its not, because I never made such a claim. My argument is about what you apparently consider to be “consequentialist nonsense”. It’s not my fault that you want me to make a case for something other than what I’m actually arguing.
If it doesn’t bother you to claim one thing (morality is subjective) but act the other (as if morality is objective); if it doesn’t bother you that you need acausal free will in order to be able to even make a moral choice or expect others to (but deny it exists); if these consequences(hypocrisy and irrationality) don’t bother you, then we don’t have anything to argue.
Like everyone else, you’re free to believe whatever you wish, including irrational things that make you hypocritical.
Arguing a thing is not claiming the thing factually exists. Perhaps that’s too fine a point for you?
Rumraket said:
I think this kind of argument is a little outside of your wheelhouse.
Well, you have said as much, as Rumraket pointed out, and you have implied it many times. You rarely bother to “correct” those at UD who take your implied stance as your real one.
Of course I want you to make a case if you’re claiming that we’re somehow “wrong” in disclaiming “objective morality.” Do you ever deal honestly with anybody or anything at all?
Your dishonesty about the matters above is no more telling than your idiotic whining that people don’t accept “objective morality” when you won’t even make a case for “objective morality.” Your biases speak about you, not about what I actually think. Quit making things up.
You mean like your hypocrisy of demanding that others accept “objective morality” when you’re too gutless and too intellectually inadequate even to make an honest argument for “objective morality?” That’s hypocrisy. I’m not responsible for your tendentious and false imputation to myself of your appalling prejudices running throughout your various claims, as those merely reflect your incapacity for understanding and dealing with people as they actually are.
Glen Davidson
Kantian Naturalist,
Now there’s a turn of phrase I wish had come to me when that William-a-like Erik got on a very similar lofty equine perch. Atheists lack even the framework to address the matter. Let’s all go to TSZ and chuck cats at them.
William J. Murray,
But you wouldn’t, of course, because to do so would appear rather cowardly.
GlenDavdison said:
No, I’ve never “said as much”. In fact, it’s something I’ve reiterated several times here – that my argument is a logical one, not a claim of fact, about which premise is the best one to assume. This is part of the cognitive bias – you think I’m implying something I’m not only not implying, but have directly corrected others for erroneously inferring many times in the past.
I’m not claiming you or anyone else is wrong in rejecting objective morality; I’m claiming that the rejection of objective morality has certain inescapable logical consequences and is in conflict with how all non-sociopaths actually behave.
Well, I can how you would think I’m not honestly responding or interacting if you are mentally insisting that what I’m saying is about something it’s not about. However, if you think that I’ve been claiming or implying at any point that (1) morality is factually objective, or (2) atheists are less moral than theists, then I’m telling you that you don’t understand anything about my argument.
I don’t care if people accept the premise that morality is objective or not. I think that the nature of my argument is a little outside of your wheelhouse as well. You seem to be personally offended. I mean, it’s okay, GlenD. It’s not a big deal. I have irrational beliefs too. We’re not going to hell for having irrational beliefs.
Well, he’s certainly threatened people that he would.
I didn’t bother enough to find out if he did ban any comments, it was just clear that he wanted people to think that he would.
Glen Davidson
Allan Miller said;
I’d do it in a heartbeat.
I censored many comments out of my threads there. I hope that clears things up.
GlenDavidson said:
Sure I do; a logical argument based upon the assumption that either condition is true (subjective and objective morality). There is some evidence that pertains to the argument, such as how non-sociopaths actually interact when it comes to moral interventions, obligations and expectations; however, the argument is largely logical, exploring the necessary consequences of each premise.
It may not be the argument you are ranting about, but it’s the one I’m actually making.
Well, it is an honest argument, and I am engaged in honest discourse; you just can’t seem to accept that what I’m arguing and discoursing about is not what you apparently want me to be arguing and discoursing about.
Kantian Naturalist,
I don’t know if I am or not. I think that morality exists in the same way that language exists. It’s not ‘outside of’ people (or any other organism that experiences approval/disapproval of its own or others’ behaviour). But nor is it mere instinct, whim, or parroting, as the cartoon subjective view might have it.
William J. Murray,
Really? Just goes to show how superior I am to you.
Rumraket said:
Are ideas no properties of minds? Of brains. If it exists in the mind/brain, how can it not be a property? Are ideas supernatural conditions? Something “has purpose”, or else purpose would not exist. Correct? Are you saying that purpose doesn’t exist? Are you saying ideas don’t exist?
Purpose exists, one way or another, in the mind of some sentient beings. Trying to claim it both exists and doesn’t exist is an example of the kind of logical dilemma moral subjectivist physicalists face. Of course it exists. Many purposes are entirely subjective – like, what should I do today? What kind of ice cream should I order? Should I take my toolbox or my playstation? All of those subjective purposes exist in the mind of the individual.
Moral purpose exists in the mind of the individual as well. The question is, should we assume morality is subjective, like other oughts in our mind? Or should we assume it is objective? We cannot act like it is subjective, and if we assume it is subjective, then that has many very undesirable but necessary logical conclusions.
So, why would one assume that morality is subjective in nature when no non-sociopath can even act as if morality is subjective? Why assume morality is subjective when that assumption turns you into a 24/7 hypocrite and draws a moral equivalence between Dahmer and Gandhi?
That’s the interesting question: why assume morality is subjective? What’s the point?
That’s not saying much.
William J. Murray,
It would have to be.
eta – dang! You changed it!
Now it’s
er … no. No, I suppose not.
ROFL
Which is not the same as claiming that you have never had someone banned from UD by asking Barry to ban them. Very clever choice of words.
I can vouch for that. He has done it to me more than once simply because I wouldn’t accept his arguments for objective morality.
While I never privately asked, I think I publicly (on a thread) asked Mr. Arrington to ban all obnoxious dissenters, and I think I have – several times – publically asked him to ban specific individuals.
If there’s anyone here that actually believes that I would delete comments just because someone wouldn’t accept my argument, then you might also want to go ahead and sell them the Brooklyn Bridge as well.
And being an honest and upright person who encourages honest and open debate, I am sure that you gave Barry some guidelines as to what you consider obnoxious. Surely you didn’t want Barry to use his own judgment. Especially given Barry’s long track record of censorship, altering comments, abusive treatment of those who disagree with him, etc.
Nobody has to take my word for it. Many here read UD and know my socks. I am comfortable having them judge for themselves.
The American Taliban – happy to enjoy freedoms you give them, yet would take away yours.