I don’t think that science has disproven, nor even suggests, that it is unlikely that an Intelligent Designer was responsible for the world, and intended it to come into existence.
I don’t think that science has, nor even can, prove that divine and/or miraculous intervention is impossible.
I don’t think that the fact that we can make good predictive models of the world (and we can) in any way demonstrates that how the world has observedly panned out was not entirely foreseen and intended by some deity.
I think the world has properties that make it perfectly possible for an Intelligent Deity to “reach in” and tweak things to her liking – and that even if it didn’t, it would still be perfectly possible, given Omnipotence, just as a computer programmer can reach in and tweak the Matrix.
I don’t think that science falsifies the idea of an omnipotent,omniscient deity – at all.
I think that only rarely has this even been claimed by scientists, and, of those, most of them were claiming that science has falsified specific claims about a specific deity, not the idea in principle of a deity.
I do think that the world is such that IF there is an omnipotent, omniscient deity, EITHER that deity does not have human welfare as a high priority OR she has very different ideas about what constitutes human welfare from the ones that most people hold (and as are exemplified, for example, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), OR she has deliberately chosen to let the laws of her created world play out according to her ordained rules, regardless of the effects of those laws on the welfare of human beings, perhaps trusting that we would value a comprehensible world more than one with major causal glitches. In my case, her trust was well-placed.
I do think that the evidence we have is far more consistent with the idea that life and its origins are the result of processes consistent with others we see acting in the world, and not a result of some extraordinary intervention or series of extraordinary interventions, regardless of any question as to whether a benign or otherwise deity designed those processes with the expectation that life would be a probable or inevitable result.
I don’t think that it follows that, were we to find incontrovertible evidence of a Intelligent Creator (for instance, an unambiguous message in English configured in a nebula in some remote region of space, or on the DNA of an ant encased in amber millions of years ago) that that would mandate us in any way to worship that designer. On the basis of her human rights record I’d be more inclined to summon her to The Hague.
I think that certain theological concepts regarding a benevolent deity useful, inspiring, entirely consistent with science, and may reflect reality.
I don’t myself, any more, believe in some external disembodied intelligent and volitional deity, simply because I am no longer persuaded that either intelligence or volition are possible in the absence of a material substrate. But I do understand why people think this is false, and that consciousness, intelligence and volition are impossible, even in principle, to account for in terms of material/energetic processes, and I also understand that, although I think, for reasons that satisfy myself, that they are mistaken, the case is not an easy one to articulate, not least because of the intrinsically reflexive nature of cogitating on cogitation.
I think that “free will” is an ultimately incoherent concept; I think that the question “do we have free will?” is ill-posed, and ultimately meaningless. I think the better question is: Do I have the ability to make informed choices for which I am morally responsible?” and I think the answer is clearly yes.
Anyone else want to unload?
I heard about the TWEB disaster. I liked TWEB – it was the only place I know of on the web where evolutionists were tolerated and theists not outnumbered (not that those two sets don’t overlap).
Take a seat and bring a friend! I don’t promise anything as good as TWEB, but I’m hoping for the same kind of diversity.
Discussion here often tees off stuff at Uncommon Descent, and sometimes other ID sites (a lot of people here are banned at Uncommon Descent), and IDers and other people are very welcome.
The latter is not equivalent. A sociopath may know perfectly well what a child is, and what torture is, and probably will understand that others consider torturing children wrong and for what reasons, but nonetheless still may not “know” that such behavior is wrong in the relevant sense. The fact that we may consider the sociopath mentally impaired is beside the point, and in fact reinforces the point. Clearly there is something missing in the sociopath that is needed besides simply having working definitions of children and torture. “Torturing children is wrong” is not self-evident in the way an analytic proposition is.
He groveled but it wasn’t enough. He’s now an official DI shill and nothing more.
William J. Murray,
Mere assertion. Equivalent to: “Once you know what a fish is, and what fishing is, you know it is wrong to fish”.
Hmmm…Williams argument relies on the Fallacy of the General Rule. With the exception of “child” and “torture”, all the other assertions are true by definition. For instance, when William notes:
This is true because we humans have defined it as such; “triangle” means “polygon with three connected sides”.
However, this is not true for “child” and “torture”. In other words, “child” does not mean “a young adult human that should not be tortured.
I personally categorically reject William’s argument. I think that torturing children for pleasure is fine for some folks. Have at it. Now, I personally do not feel like engaging in such behavior myself, but that’s just me.
He’s not even listed on the college site.
ETA: I meant the South Carolina went to, the one in the car park, after he’d grovelled about the Flood at the other one (Texas?)
William J. Murray,
Ah, the “good thing I never said that then” response.
On the former, perhaps not, though your expressed enmity towards atheism appears based upon the commonly-held belief that it comes packaged as standard with broken moral compasses.
On the latter, you appear to me to have spent many, many posts in pouring scorn upon the essential irrationality of those who do not buy your peculiar version of logic vis a vis morality. So for the record, do you in fact think it rational to reject Objective Morality without accepting nihilism?
I find the fact of tortured children a more compelling oddity given William’s claims. If William were indeed correct, anyone who tortures a child will meet with some hard consequence. Now, William has not specified what said consequence might be, but it is curious that there are no obvious consequences for such actions.
Actually, I do really feel for Dembski, though he makes me very cross – bringing up a severely autistic son must be hell, and it has clearly affected where he can take jobs. I hope the DI are paying him enough to be able to be with his family.
And he should be getting some decent royalties, I guess.
Doesn’t the fact we’re asking about it show it *isn’t* self-evident.
Not only have I never said, that I’ve explicitly stated several times on this site that I do not hold atheism to be an indicator of how moral a person is likely to be; in fact, I’ve explicitly stated that I would bet that many, if not most, atheists on this site probably behave more morally than I do. I’ve never argued that accepting that morality refers to an objective commodity would, in and of itself, make anyone behave more morally.
I think the only rational alternative to nihilism under subjective morality is if one accepts that the basis for their morality, ultimately, is might-makes-right (or, more precisely, whatever might/persuasion dictates is what is right definitionally).I think all other positions under subjective materialism are, ultimately, irrational.
I do think that your inference that I heap “scorn” upon irrational worldviews is your baggage. I have often said that not all my own views are rational, and that people can operate perfectly well with all sorts of irrational beliefs. It doesn’t make anyone less likeable, valuable, moral, or productive. It just makes their views irrational.
WJM: Did I ask if you could imagine such a culture?
Yes that was my question, I take it the answer is no. You were only inquiring about my personal reaction to the hypothetical.
To anticipate your next question, did I ask about some “imagined” you, conditioned by an imaginary culture?
Sorry, that was not my next question, though non imaginary societies existed which would have not considered your self evident moral truth correct.
My question is,why is the concept of a self evident moral truth any different than a subjective moral truth,if it is not shared universally by different people with different moral codes.Isn’t its theoretical universal nature which lends it potency? Else why ask the question?
WJM:I do think that your inference that I heap “scorn” upon irrational worldviews is your baggage.
Perhaps he feels it is self-evident
Whether or not a statement is self-evidently true has nothing to do with consensus agreement that it is true. Look up “self-evident”.
No.
OK, so why not?
How do you tell how it’s self-evident?
I’ve told you before, Robin, I consider your moral philosophy of might makes right on account of personal preference to be rationally coherent. I have no argument against it because my argument is about rationally incoherent versions of subjective morality that attempt to have their subjective cake and eat it by avoiding this conclusion.
I think for all sane people, “child” carries with it implicit moral duties by definition, including the very one you dismissed.
Just needed to repeat this; this is the necessary, rational consequence of subjective morality.
By the fact that you need no further evidence or argument; the truth of the statement is evident in and of itself. If I say, “it is wrong to torture children for personal pleasure”, do you need further evidence and argument to assess the truth-value of that statement? If a sane person understands what a child is, and what torture is, they know that torturing a child is wrong, without even having to have any organized or coherent view of morality whatsoever. We just know it’s wrong at face value.
There are other forms of self-evidently true statements, but none of them rely on consensus agreement.
If “child” carries with it implicit moral duties by definition, then “torturing children is wrong” is self-evident in an analytic sense.
The point of the current discussion seems to be that the universe should be fair and just. Which, as an “ought,” doesn’t seem to be truly in contention.
The universe just fails to meet our preferences.
Glen Davidson
As has been already noted implicitly in this thread, yes.
OK but what if someone tells you it isn’t self-evident to them. Do you assume that they are not sane?
I am absolutely sure that that is not Robin’s moral philosophy, whether you find it “coherent” or not.
People used to torture cats for pleasure. And watch torture for pleasure.
They thought it was morally fine. Were they insane?
WJM said:
JonF:
Robin:
It’s generally at this point a thread where I would stop responding, because I would be content with leaving these statements as the last words on the discussion, leaving them up to any reasonable observers to evaluate on their own.
True and thank you. I was just airing my POV for others to consider as well.
If the term is “by definition” then there’s nothing to be “implicit” about. I think you’re trying to have your cake and eat it too. But do feel free to post a reference to a definition of “child” that includes something about treatment of said “child”. Having now searched some 36 definition sources, I cannot find a single such reference.
Hmmm…I don’t know that it’s a consequence of so much as an example. In other words, I doubt anyone adopts a subjective morality just so he or she can accept whatever he or she wishes. Rather I think that people accept whatever they do and different people just accept different things.
You are totally missing the point, William. Of course none of us think that it is anything other than bloody obvious that torturing children for pleasure is wrong.
Nor do (I think) any of us think that might makes right.
But “finding self-evident” is itself subjective. To claim that because most people find it so, therefore it is objective, is to appeal to consensus.
To claim that because you do, it is objective, it a completely dangerous precedent, because perhaps you (or someone) also finds it “self-evident” that something I think is self-evidently wrong, is self-evidently right.
All you’ve done is substitute “self-evident” for “I think so and so do all sane people”.
How on earth is that different from “consensus”?
Well, to be fair to William, I did note that I hold a subjective moral view and I have freely admitted that I find no other way of enforcing a given moral state other than might. Technically his statement then is true. That my moral philosophy goes beyond that as well doesn’t not change the accuracy of William’s summary.
Was it right for John Calvin and his cohorts to use green wood to burn Michael Servetus at the stake in order to prolong his torture? Was it even right to burn people at the stake for heresy?
How about the method of getting Giles Corey to confess during the Salem Witch trials?
Does morality evolve?
Robin: “Implicit” means exactly that you would not find that meaning explicitly written out in any definition, but rather that it is implicit. As in, you don’t need any information about the child – their circumstances, gender, intelligence, race, creed, etc. – to know that if it is a child, torturing it is wrong. I mean, if you’re sane.
Liz: I’ll let you have the last input there. I’m quite satisfied that your question in itself (along with the prior quotes I highlighted from others) offers all the information necessary for reasonable people to evaluate the atheist/materialist subjective-morality position.
I suppose I could quibble about the characterization of “might makes right”. While I can’t think of any way for a moral state to be enforced saved for might, I don’t think that enforcement of a given moral state makes that moral state right. In other words, it’s just as easy to enforce an immoral state. Might, therefore, does not make right. The person’s (or people’s) feelings of right or wrong make something right.
Quite so, but then that meaning would not be “by definition”, by definition. 😀
Which again, is not by definition in this case. Therefore, this scenario is not analogous to any of the others you provided.
Well, I’m equally confident that rational people will see that you failed to address an absolutely key question regarding your claim to objectivity.
I agree, in fact, that morality is objective, by which I mean that independent people, using similar lines of reasoning and evidence, can come to the same conclusion – that torturing children for pleasure is wrong, for instance.
But this is apparently not your claim – your claim is that you just “know” that it is wrong – and yet you simultaneously claim that it is “objective”!
Leaving us to hope fervently that you don’t “know” that some other things are self-evidently wrong!
After all, there are plenty of people who claim that homosexual sex is “self-evidently wrong”!
How do you know that they are not right?
(As I hope you do!)
But by all means ignore my question. I am happy to leave your non-response as an adequate answer.
No.
No.
No.
No, but our understanding of it does.
BTW, if you’re a moral subjectivist, then you are logically compelled to admit that all of the above are perfectly valid examples of good moral events. The fact that you and I both know they are obviously immoral (which is why you offered them up, presumably because you are still under the apparently impenetrable misapprehension that I’m a Christian) makes my case.
The only principle a moral subjectivist has to judge the above acts immoral is the same principle that validates the acts as moral; personal opinion. Without an arbiter assumed to be objective, those acts can be equally seen as moral or immoral – but, you’re banking on the fact they are obviously immoral to make your point, aren’t you?
Only, I agree with you. Those are obviously immoral examples – but, that supports my case, not the subjectivist case.
No, according to William, morality does not evolve. Those folks were acting immorally. It’s self-evident for anyone who is not insane. Why those folks did not recognize the immorality of their actions is unknown, but likely it is because they were either deluded by society or insane. Or both.
The problem with this approach (and no, I do not agree with it) is that retroactively applies a modern societal judgement on those of a different societal framework. I certainly do not think that coercion or burning are moral acts, but do we judge all slave owners as “immoral” simply for owning slaves at a time when it was legal or do we base such a judgement on how they treated the people under such a law? Personally, I go with the latter.
Ah.
Well, no, it doesn’t. What it does, it seems to me, is to say that only some people (not Christians, apparently, but including some atheists) have the capacity to find the right things “self-evidently wrong”.
And yet those other people (Christians, for instance, including Martin Luther) also find things “self-evidently wrong”. But not the same things!
So how do I know whether Martin Luther is insane, or whether both you and I are?
Don’t you see the conundrum, even, William?
There is absolutely nothing “objective” about your methodology at all. You just assume that your (and our, mercifully) capacity to detect what is “self-evidently wrong” is reliable, and that that of others (including Martin Luther) isn’t.
What would you say to Martin Luther? “You are insane”? “You are wrong”?
And if he replied “no, you are insane – you are wrong” – how do you proceed?
Understood. You can’t support your claim and you run away.
The idea of “objective morality” is something that I’d like to be true. But there’s a serious problem with it that I don’t know how to resolve.
In the case of empirical science, we can specify what objective features of reality are being referred to by our theories — we are referring to spatio-temporal particulars and the causal relations between them. That’s what we’re trying to describe correctly, and we can make sense of scientific progress in terms of replacing one description of that domain with a better description. (That we’ll never have a completely precise description complicates matters somewhat, but doesn’t undermine this account entirely.)
By contrast, it’s just not clear to me what exactly is the playing the analogous role in morality. One set of moral prescriptions and prohibitions is better than another set by virtue of being a better description of . . . well, of what, exactly?
Wow. This is exactly what I asked WJM lo, these many moons ago… and, of course, he never answered my question. Nor will he answer it now, I would expect. WJM may or may not respond to your question—he provides responses often enough—but actual answers? Not so much.
Déjà vu all over again, man…
Come now, KN. By now you should have a model of WJM’s verbiage-generation algorithm that is robust enough to predict his response: It’s self-evident.
I still don’t understand how you arrive at this conclusion. As a moral subjectivist, I certainly don’t conclude that it’s a “good moral event” from some objective external perspective, since I don’t believe that such a perspective exists.
As for subjective perspectives, I obviously don’t conclude that burning a man alive is a “good moral event.” Some people subjectively disagree with me, but that’s true whether or not I’m a subjectivist. (Even an objectivist would be compelled to admit that some people subjectively believed these acts were good.)
You’ve made a serious mistake in logic here. You can certainly say that a subjectivist doesn’t believe that these things were objectively wrong. But that’s a useless tautology, so you try to flip it and say that a subjectivist must say they’re “valid examples of good moral events.” But that conclusion simply doesn’t follow.
If my explanation doesn’t make sense, try what I’ve suggested several times to you now: ask, to whom? These are perfectly valid examples of good moral events to whom? To Lizzie? Obviously not. To the people who perpetrated them? Obviously so. But those observations are the same for subjectivists and objectivists. It’s an empty statement.
Liz,
My sanity reference was a specific, not a general case.
None of the other examples proposed that anyone was being tortured “for fun”.
People can and do behave irrationally, or for evil or corrupt reasons, without being “insane”; they can be misguided and be misinformed, and/or have poor reasoning skills. It doesn’t matter if one is religious or not. The secular world also full of immoral behavior masquerading as moral, and the world is full of self-deceived people justifying their personal desires.
I reject your idiosyncratic, misappropriated definition of the term “objective”.
Actually, I would expect that WJM’s response would be that one set of moral prescriptions and prohibitions is better than another set by virtue of being a better description of divinely inaugurated purposes.
Not for you. If you did it, it would be immoral; but if morality is entirely subjective, then it’s not your behavior you are judging; it’s the behavior of others, and all you have to judge the morality of their behavior by is if they felt their behavior moral.
You don’t get to apply how you would feel if you did it to judge if their behavior was wrong, because that would be acting as if your personal, subjective moral feelings were applicable and binding on their behavior. How you feel about their behavior is not transferrable as a moral judgment on the behavior of others because you are not them, subjectively, doing what they did and feeling about it the way they do. Only they can answer whether or not their act was moral just as only they can tell you if they prefer apple pie over cherry. Subjective morality is a personal preference; only the person engaging in the behavior can answer whether or not it is moral.
Nobody else has a say in the matter.
Now, only if you assert that you have the right to force other people to adhere to your personal preferences (which is all a moral is, under moral subjectivism) can you justify intervening in someone else’s activity on the grounds that it is morally wrong (meaning: you personally prefer they not do it).
The only principle that can possibly justify forcing one’s personal preferences on others is might makes right.
Can you give me your own definition of objective?
Mine seems fairly standard. Not that I think complete objectivity is possible with morality, but I do think that we can collectively construct some basic agreed tenets from which most people can come to similar but independent judgements.
But he rejects divine revelation, fortunately.
Not for you. If you did it, it would be immoral; but if morality is entirely subjective, then it’s not your behavior you are judging; it’s the behavior of others, and all you have to judge the morality of their behavior by is if they felt their behavior moral.
Why can’t a subjectivist use their own standards to judge another’s actions? You seem to be assuming that as a given, but it doesn’t make sense. If I believe that murder is subjectively wrong, why can’t I say it’s wrong for someone else to do it?
Fortunately, WJM rejects divine command theory, which is so severely problematic for all sorts of reasons — some of which have been discussed here, and others have not been. But he’s been pretty clear in being an idiosyncratic natural-law theorist.
Well, hold on a second here — WJM wouldn’t say that you can’t — he’d say that you’re not rationally entitled to do so, and that to use your own standards as a basis for judgment is a subtle, covert form of “might makes right”.
Kantian Naturalist,
I think we’re all using “can’t” in the same way here, but thanks for heading off a miscommunication.
I think the position you describe (which may well be his, but I don’t take that necessarily from his comment) is still lacking. If I judge someone else’s conduct to be inequitable, what would make judgment “right” in my own opinion? Not might. What would make it “right” in someone else’s opinion? Not might.
I just don’t see any serious logical argument from WJM that leads to “might makes right.”