Nearly ten years ago, on the 15th September, 2001, I read this piece in the Guardian, by Richard Dawkins.
I was a theist then, a catholic, in fact, by conversion, in my early twenties, having been baptized in the Episcopal Church of Scotland, sung at matins every Sunday until from age 8 to 11, sent to a Quaker boarding school, where I was devout, if rebellious, and became a Friend, later being confirmed at a High Church Anglican church in Devon, and finally, having married a catholic, feeling I had “come home” to the catholic church.
Always liberal, though – when I was being prepared for reception into the catholic church by the university chaplain, a Benedictine called Fr Fabian Cowper, he asked me if I had any concerns. I said, yes: contraception and papal infallibility. He replied: well, contraception is a good example of papal fallibility. So I thought I’d be OK. It was still not that long after Vatican II, liberation theology was in the air, and the Dominicans in Oxford were regular attenders at the Greenham Common protests, and there was a sense that the church might be a slow vast tanker but the People of God would turn it round. I hung on in there, even when my mother, who later converted herself, was temporarily excommunicated for publishing a book that argued that the church’s moral teaching on medical ethics was mostly wrong (a Jesuit professor of moral theology preached the eulogy at her requiem mass, and paid tribute to her for “having the courage to say what we dare not”, and for having had more faith in her church than her church had had in her. But looking back, that piece in the Guardian was the beginning of the end.
I remember thinking, and saying to my fairly recently bereaved father: “he makes a devasting point – it will be interesting to see how the churches rise to the challenge”.
But they didn’t. There were a couple of peeved responses, IIRC, but no-one took up the challenge. No-one had anything to say to rebut the charge that religion was not just not the defender of morality, but its actual enemy.
I think there is a rebuttal. But it’s a sad reflection on religion IMO that the response has been so pathetic.
Ideology should have died that day. I don’t think religion is the only evil ideology, and it seems to be a human tragedy that the worst deeds are done in the name of some perceived greater good rather than out of simple brutal appetite. One of the most evil things in the world seems to me to be the conviction that your own views are right. Hence the strapline to this blog.
And I, and I suspect others, fail to see how your morality, rationality, good is any less subjective than anyone else’s.
What you see and don’t see, and your anecdotal stories and comparisons, are irrelevant to my argument. What would be relevant is logic-based rebuttals and challenges.
Again, such observations are irrelevant to the argument.
These exchanges make me wonder about the title of the blog … skepticism based on what? Obviously not logic; so skepticism based on emotions? Personal proclivity? Skepticism without any principle or basis whatsoever?
Hyperskepticism about anything one happens to dislike? Strange.
To what, William?
But what is your argument? I thought you are claiming you can derive a morality, a good, objectively. I can’t see anywhere where you have even begun to do this.
William J Murray,
Let’s perform some logic then.
I assert A and feed it into my first truth table along with assertions B and C.
According to my truth table, (which to you is unknown), my result is false.
I feed that into another truth table along with other inputs, sequentially down the chain.
If my initial assertion of A, which I fed into the very first stage is not valid, the end result will not be valid regardless of the logic performed. Here it is not logic or reasoning that has failed us, it is our initial assertions.
Here is one of your assertions, …
..and here is your conclusion.
That is flawless logic and reasoning. I agree 100%.
But you then proceed in all your other comments as if the assertion that all humans with free will have the same purpose, is valid!
That is clearly not so. The priest and his parishioner have different purposes!
Your assertion is not valid and neither is anything that depends on it downstream.
Skepticism is never based on logic. If properly done, logic should be impeccable, so never a basis for skepticism. Disagreements are usually disagreements about premises, not disagreements about the logic that uses those premises.
I’ve been about as clear as I can be about it.
The closest thing humans have achieved to an objective moral code is law.
It’s objective not for philosophical reasons, but because it is beyond the power of any individual to create or change. It requires consent, at lest at the level of the group.
Religious teachings seem to have been the beginning of law, but they have evolved over time. Most cultures do not burn witches or kill disobedient children.
Law is not rational in the philosophical sense, but it is what we have. If you could get everyone to agree on some principle of morality, it would be rather easy to get it made into law.
The fact that some principles don’t make it into law, or have been removed from law, indicates they are not universally accepted.
That all humans have the same objective purpose is not an assertion; it is a necessary premise for a rational morality.
Subjective purposes – goals we set for ourselves, things we’re trying to accomplish, etc., are not the same as an Aristotlean final cause.
You may very well need humans to have “the same objective purpose” to use as a premise for your ultimate conclusion, but you haven’t shown that humans have “the same objective purpose”.
That is what’s missing from so many ID arguments. There is no support for the assertions being made. It’s not ID logic in itself that is necessarily wrong. It is the basic “input” into the “machine” that is unsupported.
Proceeding from unsupported premises, anyone could logically prove anything.
Support your assertion that all humans have the same objective purpose. If you can’t, it is an unwarranted assertion and any conclusion that depends on it is invalid.
Well, it’s sailed right past me.
This objective “good” or objective “moral code” or objective “purpose for all humans” is what our debate is about. Is there something objective, outside of ourselves, that is waiting for us to discover and subscribe to?
I could have instead submitted to you; “..so the a priori that there is NO objective “good” means that there is NO requirement for a sentient entity that created humanity for the good final cause;..”
For either of us to use our conclusions as an input into our sequence of logical statements makes it a very circular argument.
As I said:
and might have added:
“often enshrined in a code of law”
I think the real problem is that you don’t understand the distinction between an assertion and a necessary, axiomatic premise.
The premise is supported by the argument & conclusions that extend from it in comparison to the argument & conclusions that extend from the alternative.
You’re conflating two entirely different things. “The good” is what a moral code attempts to describe in terms of oughts. “The good” is discoverable via the process I have already explained – finding self-evident moral truths and then using logic to extrapolate a moral system from there.
Yes, you can (and I have) submitted as an a priori the converse alternative. That’s the whole point of the rational debate – to examine the logical consequences of both a priori premises. It’s not a matter of “proving” which is true, but rather showing what each premise results in.
It’s not a circular argument to being with a premise and then work from there to conclusion. You seem to think that I have claimed to have “proven” or “demonstrated” that “the good” is objective by beginning with the premise that it is objective. I have not, I can not, and I will not even attempt to prove that “the good” is objective, or that a god exists.
I’m only showing where each premise necessarily leads logically. It is still, of course, up to the individual to decide for themselves what they want to believe. If they wish to believe in an irrational, ultimately hypocritical, might-makes-right moral good, which is the necessary result of the premise of a subjective good, they are free to do so, and that may in fact be all that “good” is, and all that morality can factually be.
Note: the premise is not proven true by the logic that follows it; it just shows the comparison between what follows from a premise of objective good, and what follows from a premise of subjective good.
It is certainly not my concern if you wish to adhere to a subjective-good morality. It could very well be true that there are only subjective goods.
You haven’t shown where it leads to logically. You have more than one premise you rely on that is unproven and disputed.
For instance:
1) I don’t believe “The good” can be discovered in the manner you have presented.
2) I don’t believe your “good” even exists. This is what we are disputing.
3 )There are no “common”self-evident moral truths, rather, different individuals/cultures/groups/religions seem to arrive at different “self-evident truths” which result in moral codes that serve them better in their time and place than our current North American moral code would.
I submit that your above conclusion is false and therefore your initial premises and/or logic may be faulty. I see the result of a “subjective good” to be preferrable to an “absolute imposed by someone else that we should all adhere to good”.
William J Murray,
I think what we are really arguing is this:
Is there something important outside of us that can affect and move us?
I don’t think we can solve that question with logic since we don’t have any empirical data to feed our truth tables.
Is it necessary to know? If it was, we would all be looking for that answer, but for some reason, just as large a group of people seek as the ones who don’t.
(1) “You don’t believe” is not a logical rebuttal.
(2)That you disagree with the premise is irrelevant – I would expect you to disagree with the premise. The question isn’t if the premises are agreeable or not (or even if they are true or not), but if the inferences from the premise are sound.
(3) Positing countering assertions is not a logical rebuttal.
That may be what you are arguing, but it is entirely irrelevant to what I am arguing.
I’m not attempting to make a case of fact supported by evidence; I’m making a case for best premise in terms of developing and maintaining a rationally consistent morality. IOW, if we wish to establish and develop a rationally coherent morality, which a priori premise can best serve that purpose?
Whether or not an objective good actually exists, or can be demonstrated or proved, is entirely beside the point.
To put this in very simple terms, “the good” might be subjective, and might be objective. If we posit that it is objectively existent, then it is like gravity – something we can make self-evidently true statements about, then use logic to discern and flesh out a better understanding of it. There are consequences that follow depending on whether or not you behave “according to gravity” … i.e., negative consequences for stepping off a cliff.
If, however, the good is subjective, like whether or not one likes strawberries, or what kind of clothing fashion they prefer, then logic is useless in trying to determine a standard of “taste” to adhere to, there are no “self-evident moral truths”, and there are no objective consequences to whatever moral choices one makes – objective in the sense that they are inescapable, such as the effects of gravity.
I’m not saying one or the other is true; I’m just pointing out the logical consequences that flow from each premise.
William J Murray,
What is the point of rational coherence if no one agrees on the premises?
I have no “point” to offer those who abandon logical coherence.
As far as I know, there are only two possible premises; that the good is objectively existent, or that it is subjective in nature. I explored the logical ramifications of both premises.
So all we can do is choose what to think, let someone else tell us what to think or think of some empirical test for the existence of “objective good”. Are there any other choices?
But there are no consequences that flow from believing or not believing in some “objective good”. Choosing to conform to the agreed (nonetheless subjective) norms of the society in which one finds oneself, how one acts, is the essential.
Of course one can still argue about what is “good taste” without having to refer to some alleged “objective” standard. That’s what a system of government should be engaged in, having representatives that are in some way responsive to the general populace, formulating laws that ensure fairness, freedom and justice with a legal system to ensure compliance.
Well I don’t see how believing there is an “objective good” rather than having a consensus on a “subjective good” (the resulting community code could be identical – whether subjective or objective) makes any practical difference whatsoever.
What am I missing?
I agree that it is one or the other.
Either…
1) ..there is an existing “objective good”, so we should all behave according to a moral code based on that “good” and we won’t fight amongst each other,
or…
2) there is a “subjective good” that we must agree on between each other, and if we all behave according to a moral code based on that “good”, we won’t fight amonst each other.
Why is one now preferrable over the other?
Then you are not making a point of any kind..
If I assume as a premise that I know more about physics than Stephen Hawking, I can safely assume that in any disagreement about physics, I would be right and he would be wrong.
The logic is very sound but it is my premise that my argument hinges on, and your premises that your argument hinges on.
Yet there are atheists, like myself, who have a consistent, rational, moral and sane worldview.
I don’t think your argument has been proven at all since here I am.
Hey, I’m Spartacus!
Nothing.
I’ve already covered this.
I don’t think you’re cognizant of the point I’m arguing, but I appreciate your time and contributions, such as they were.
Nothing that is of any concern to you, I am sure.
William J Murray,
Thanks for the discussion.
Well, I’m sorry we didn’t come up to scratch. Anyway, nobody got dumped in the guano. Perhaps next time at Uncommon Descent. 😉
Namaste, William.
It looks to me as if WJM’s position can be summarized thusly:
Morality based on subjective ‘good’: This is bad, because people have to agree on what that subjective ‘good’ is, and they might not agree on it. Morality based on objective ‘good’: This is good, because people have to agree on what that objective ‘good’ is, and once you’ve declared that ‘good’ to be self-evident, of course they’ll agree on it.
Somehow, the force of WJM’s argument escapes me.
You can, of course, summarize my argument however you wish; however, your summary above demonstrates that you did not understand the purpose or the substance of the argument.
William Murray said:
“If you cannot support your claims, I suggest you withdraw or reword them.”
Does that apply to you too? Can you support all of your claims with anything other than your opinion or the opinions of other religious people?
“Claiming “default” status for one’s views is not a rational defense of those views.”
You might want to consider that in regard to your views.
“I already gave you an example of a self-evidently true moral statement: It is wrong to torture infants for personal pleasure.”
It’s only self evidently true to someone to whom it’s self evidently true, and if it’s self evidently true there’s no need for external morals that are preached in religious dogma.
Cubist,
Murray, like most or all other religious people, obviously believes that he has the scoop and the corner on morals. He believes that by saying that his morals come from the dictates of his imagined God (an external source), that his morals are good, and objective, and that morals derived in any other way are bad, and subjective. The phrase “holier than thou” comes to mind.
Except I haven’t made any of the above claims, nor any such implications. In fact, I’ve gone out of my way to explain that I’m not trying to make any claim of fact about “what is moral” – not even when I offer up a “self-evidently true” moral statement, which was provided only as an example of what one might offer as a self-evidently true moral statement if those involved first agree to the objective-good premise.
I never said one premise was “more true” than the other, nor did I even claim one was ultimately “better” in any sense other than that the objective-good premise offered a means to a rationally coherent and consistent morality that was not ultimately rooted the problematic maxims of either “consensus” or “might makes right”.
I suggest that since you failed to comprehend the fundamental thrust of my argument, you are now merely trying to characterize me in some familiar, categorical way for dismissal with prejudice.
I am not arguing that either posited basis for morality is “better” than the other, except in the bare sense that one lends itself to rational consistency and coherency, and that the other does not, unless one is willing to always acquiesce to the moral dictation of the mighty or the consensus (which is essentially the same thing). It could very well be that a morality based on a subjective good is “better” in every other way, and is factually correct. Those possibilities have nothing to do with my argument whatsoever.
I haven’t claimed that you “should” adopt an objective-good premise, nor have I indicated that one is “bad” if they do not, nor have I even made the case that a morality based on the objective-good premise is more likely to be the factual case about what morals and “good” actually “are” in reality.
If any of you would like to demonstrate how a moral system based on the premise of a subjective good can be rationally coherent, feel free to provide your argument here. Please begin with your premises of “what is good” and why I should adopt it, then move on to how one figures out contingent moral choices based on those premises, and how one would justify challenging an moral statements generally regarded as true (meaning, on what principled basis can they object to currently-held moral views).
Absent that, claiming that one can construct a rationally coherent and consistent morality based on a subjective-good premise is just that – a claim, like any other, one that I’ve already shown cannot be achieved because it provides no fundamental basis for acceptance of premise (since the premise is originally held to be subjective) or any substantive reason to adhere to the moral code (if I feel like it, if I get caught), nor any means to rationally arbit disagreements (since it is all ultimately subjective).
You have made that claim in this very thread.
According to the above, we cannot have, “a consistent, rational, moral, sane worldview”, unless we assume god exists and there is an objective good.
As best I can tell, WJM, I have understood the substance of your argument. You disagree, but you don’t provide any indication of how/where/why my summary fails to accurately represent your argument; instead, you’ve basically replied nuh-uh!
Until such time as you bestir yourself to identify any specific bits of your argument which my summary overlooks or misrepresents, I will continue to regard my summary of your argument as accurate.
That’s a statement concerning the argument about comparative worldviews. The statement you are comparing that against is a statement concerning the warrant for a rational morality argument.
Those are two different things. In order to have a “rational, moral” worldview, a necessary aspect of that worldview would be a rationally coherent morality. One cannot have a rationally incoherent morality as part of a rationally coherent worldview.
Try not to conflate the two in the future.
Yes, I have corrected you.
William J Murray,
I’ll never understand why you religious people think that you can fool rational people with your dishonest games. Why don’t you be honest and just admit that you believe that you and your morals are superior to other people and their morals who don’t believe in your imagined God? That’s what it really comes down to, isn’t it?
I’m sure this will be a shock to you but many of us, to whom “good” morals are “self-evident”, don’t need an external list of morals that are dictated by a religious dogma. In other words, we don’t need to refer to or submit to a set of religious commandments or threats of eternal damnation to know how to behave in a “good” way.
And since you said something that clearly isn’t true (see Toronto’s post) I think that you are the one who needs to examine his morals.
So, we’ll try this once again:
The morality argument is about comparative premises to reach a rational moral systme. That doesn’t mean that that a rational morality exists, or would even be (in any other sense) better than a non-rational morality. This only matters to anyone if they wish to have a rationally sustainable and coherent moral system.
There are two possible fundamental premises: that morality is a system of statements about how humans “ought to behave that refer to (1) an objective, universal, fundamental good, or (2) subjective, human-chosen & invented “goods”.
That one must choose (1) or (2) on an a priori basis is a matter of epistemological preference, but we can follow the consequences of each a priori to see if they at least allow for a rational system of morality to develop.
I ran down the logical consequences to each premise in this thread, showing that only (1) provides the necessary warrant for the belief that a moral system can be rationally coherent. The primary problems that (2) faces is that it provides no means for rational challenge or arbitration because morality is not presumed to refer to an objective commodity (so there would be no assumption of a standard or principle to challenge it by or arbit disagreements); it doesn’t even provide warrant that we **should** be able to find agreed-upon moral statements, any more than we **should” be able to find agreed upon “favorite flavors” or “favorite colors”.
Also, there is no warrant for the belief that any moral statement is in any way binding, or that there is any necssary consequence to any immoral act, which renders morality largely an exercise in sophistry.
The only proper & sufficient grounding for any list of “oughts” is that such oughts refer to an objective goal or purpose. This a priori gives us a reason to believe that we should be able to find and agree upon self-evidently true moral statements, and from there use logic to discern a fuller moral code (just as we do with other phenomena we hold to be objectively existent).
Subjective-good based morality offers no hope or reason why we should be able to expect to logically arbit or challenge any moral statements because at the offset we are assuming they are just subjective claims and feelings that have no objective standard or principles by which to make such arbitrations.
For example, if we say “consensus” determines “what morals are”, and morals are statments about how humans ought to behave, then there is no principled means in that system by which to challenge the consensus view; which means whatever the consensus thinks is how we should all strive to behave.
Therefore, if the consensus believes it is immoral to swear, not go to church, or go outside without a veil on, then those who advocate for “consnensus” -based morality must strive to do those things, or else they are hypocrites.
If one says that their guiding subjective principle is the golden rule, the question is “so what?” What reason do I have to adopt the golden rule, belieivng that it is just the subjective rule you happen to have chosen? Why should I care what “rule” you happen to like, when there is no necessary ramification to “not adopting” the rule, and you’re not even claiming that it represents anything objective?
That’s like saying “you should start eating apple pie because I like it” – I have no reason to change my behavior in accordance with your maxim, or to even consider doing so, because you’re not even positing that there is any substantive reason to do so.
If you say that I should do so because it will help everyone live together in peace, then you real moral maxim is “to live together in peace” and the golden rule is just a means to get that end.
But why should I care about “living together in peace” in the first place? Again, it is not posited as anything more than just the subjective goal you happen to like. There’s not even any necessary consequences for me declining your subjectively goal. I can as easily and as “rightly” choose “everyone serves William J. Murray” as my moral maxim, because we’re both just choosing whatever we happen to like as a goal.
All subjective morality is assumed to be from the outset is a matter of personal preference and taste. However, when morality is posited as referring to an objective good, with inescapable consequences, then there is basis for arbiting one’s personal taste in favor of the objective standard. Otherwise, there’s no rational reason to change from “let’s gas all the jews” to “let’s give the jews equal rights and liberties”, if one happens to be born into the former consensus view.
Even “so everyone can live in peace together” can be interpreted into “let’s kill everyone who gets in the way of that goal”. Many tyrants have used that very justification.
The only a priori that gives basis for a rational morality is that of an assumed objective good.
As I said, though, I’ve already covered this.
You really should read the thread before you begin commenting on it. You are assuming things about me that are utterly unfounded.
These are your pre-requisites for “one” single world-view. I did not not in any way infer them from your writings, you stated them explicitly for “one” single-world-view.
You can correct me on this point by saying something to the effect of, “you do NOT need to assume god exists and you do NOT need to assume an objective good.”
I simply pointed out a statement of yours, that explicitly stated a requirement for god.
You state that you have no preference for one world-view as opposed to another, yet you claim only the world-view that contains god is sane.
This is something else I’m going to need clarification on since logically, if I choose a world-view without god, that world-view is not sane or rational in your opinion.
No god, or figure of authority of any church, can “make something good” by decreeing it so. If “the good” is arbitrarily chosen by any entity, it is nothing more than “might makes right”; people are right to dismiss any doctrine or claim that is essentially nothing more than “might makes right” – even if that might is God’s.
Unless “the good” is something fundamentally existent that not even god can alter or command, it is not a good worth worrying about. No authority or power invents, commands, or changes what is good – not even god.
My moral system provides the grounds to challenge, on a principled basis, the claims of any authority, or any claim supposedly made on behalf of any god, or contained in any book, or supposedly held by any consensus. It also offers a means to develop a rationally arbited and consistent moral model that is not ultimately self-annihilating, as all subjective-good based models are.
The ramifications of moral or immoral behavior are not what some sentient judge “decrees”; there is no capricious “punishment” or “reward” for immoral and immoral behavior, any more than there is a capricious punishement or reward for “obeying” or “disobeying” the rules of gravity; there are only inevitable consequences to behavior.