Liberals love science - until it proves them wrong.

[Adrift]

Oh, I should also point out that this same group, though thinking of themselves as feminists, seem to hate what they refer to as Tumblrinas. Which would include hardcore third-wave feminists, the Black Lives Matters people, and safe-place super-sensitive types.

[rogue06]

Most liberals I know are very anti-police. Always have been. So I'm not sure how much of an indicator that might be. What I find strange about the libertarian thing is that even if they are libertarian, most of their social values seem to lean left anyways. Are libertarians generally more left-leaning than right? Anyways, all I know is that these folks were for or against the issues I made in that post, and they were all super-duper hyped about Sanders. Sanders isn't libertarian, is he?

Many libertarians lean more to the left on social issues and to the right on fiscal issues. Although there are, of course, numerous exceptions.

[Starlight]

I don't know how representative Reddit is of liberalism as a whole. There's a strong social libertarian current on there, like with most sites that have a tech-y crowd.

Yep. Young people across the Western world on social issues are consistently extremely liberal/libertarian. They also tend to love science, and deeply mistrust religion. They are split on economic views into (minority) anti-government libertarians, and (majority) left-wing democratic-socialists... what unites both sides is they are very anti-corruption and loathe corporate-controlled-government with a vengeance. Tech-y people have a tendency towards technocracy and believing that the government can be replaced with computers and hence tend towards anti-government libertarianism.

Reddit runs young and tech-y. So it first and foremost loves science, dislikes religion, and loves liberal positions on all social issues. And is due to leaning tech-y it has an unusually high amount of libertarianism so is very split on economic issues between libertarianism and democratic-socialism.

So I would generally agree with Adrift in his assessment:

Again check Reddit for example. The same people who are super in support of Bernie Sanders also LOVE their guns, are extremely pro-LGBT, are pro-environment, are pro-GMO, are pro-vaccine, are pro-universal healthcare, anti-religion (though they like the current pope), pro-NASA/SETI, pro-nuclear, pro-choice, anti-circumcision, pro-male rights, super in love with Sagan/Dawkins/Pinker/Singer/Tyson/Chomsky/Harris/Finkelstein/Krauss/ and Feynman, and seem to get most of their news from Stephen Colbert, NPR, and John Oliver, are hardcore gamers, and think that South Park and Family Guy are the funniest shows ever created. I'd say that the majority of these people are in their late teens to mid-30s, predominately white and upper middle class, and college educated.

Except for his claims about loving guns and pro-male rights, neither of which I've myself seen any evidence for. But I agree with the rest of his generalizations.

[Starlight]

What I find strange about the libertarian thing is that even if they are libertarian, most of their social values seem to lean left anyways. Are libertarians generally more left-leaning than right?

Libertarians are left-leaning on social issues and (mostly) right-leaning on economic issues.

The PoliticalCompass.com charts are useful for thinking about this:


Most political parties tend to sit fairly near the diagonal that runs from bottom-left to top-right. That line could be considered the traditional "left-right" political spectrum, with people on the "liberal left" falling toward the bottom-left end of the diagonal, people on the "conservative right" falling somewhere towards the top-right, and centrists occupying the center regions of the diagonal. So, for example, the 2008 US Presidential candidates:

What's unusual about Ron Paul and Mike Gravel is how far off the diagonal axis they are. As libertarians they agree with the liberal-left on social issues (ie they are fairly far down the chart vertically) but agree with the right on economic issues (ie they are fairly far right on the chart horizontally). The other position well off the main axis is communism (top-left of the chart).

Redditors would score consistently liberal on social issues, so far down the chart vertically. But are divided on economic issues, so would be spread right across the the chart from far left to far right horizontally.

[Adrift]

Except for his claims about loving guns and pro-male rights, neither of which I've myself seen any evidence for. But I agree with the rest of his generalizations.

I don't know how long you've been a member of Reddit, but it's always been super pro-gun. At least, ever since I started visiting regularly back during the Digg exodus. It's such a well known feature of Reddit that Encylopedia Dramatica pokes fun at it as one of Reddit's "likes". Mother Jones did an article about Reddit as a marketplace for guns some time back, and this /r/OutoftheLoop question picks up on it as well,

u/bwh520 - The reddit population has always seemed to be liberal and young. At the very least, the top posts and comments were always slanted that way. The biggest outlier I can remember is when Ron Paul was running for president and then suddenly the top posts were mostly libertarian for a while. When it comes to things like foreign policy, education, income inequality, and Healthcare, the most up voted comment will generally be on the liberal side of the debate. However, the community completely switches to the far right whenever a post mentions gun control. If fact this post is inspired by the picture on the front page of guns being destroyed in Australia years ago. The top comment thread is person after person claiming how stupid any sort of gun control is. This seems very out of character for the general reddit population and I can't remember reddit ever leaning that for right on a subject. Does anyone know what caused this shift in hive mind? And I'm not asking for opinions from one side or the other on gun control itself, just when and why did this change happen.

_PM_ME_YOUR_SMILE - I've been wondering this too for a long time. Reddit seems to be overwhelmingly liberal, except for being staunchly pro-gun.
I don't think any change happened, I think it's always been like that.

Also, if you don't think that Reddit leans heavy on Men's Rights, then you must only check those places you're subbed to. Check the comments to posts in /r/All once in awhile, and you'll find it absolutely crawling with MRA types. I mean, this is the website that famously associated the "Red Pill" with MRA, and there have been a few articles on MRA and Reddit as well. Here's one.

[Starlight]

But that is a rational "ought" which is not the same as a moral "ought" and it is therefore not a morally binding ought. A moral ought can give rise to a rational ought, but I see no reason why a rational ought can give rise to a moral ought.

In naturalistic morality (ie the naturally arising framework for social interactions I've been describing) the rational oughts about how we ought to behave toward others get subsequently labelled as moral oughts.

IMO obligations are one of the more fundamental building blocks of any consistent framework of morality.

In naturalistic morality, "obligations" are simply a quaint way of talking about how we ought to behave toward others.

Well, I can swap them if you want, but it still doesn't change the fact that you've yet to give any rational support for premise 3. You can argue that any sane and rational person will act in accordance to their values, but that's just the same rational "ought" which you described above, and not the moral "ought" which is relevant in a discussion of morality.

Well the rational oughts about how we ought to behave toward others, become the moral oughts because we simply directly label them as such.

I mean, you can call things "good" and "evil" or certain acts "right" or "wrong" within the framework you've set up, but these words imply a set of moral value judgements and moral obligations that your framework fails to account for.

? Within the framework of naturalistic morality there are moral values and you make moral judgements, and you use moral terms to do so, and you have moral obligations.

I guess you can choose to not like that framework if you like. But the moral terms themselves don't inherently "imply" things outside of that framework.

The problem ISTM, is that instead of recognizing that making value judgements and judging the motivations behind an action is part of a much bigger framework of morality, you seem to be basing the whole moral framework on facets that the framework is supposed to explain, rather than being explained by them.

I think what you're getting at is that naturalitic morality measures/judges an action based on criteria that are intrinsic within the action itself. If an action is done out of good-will, then it is "good", by definition.

That is different to judging something by an external standard that is not intrinsic to the action. eg "Hmm, let's see now, you did action X. Let me just look up my Book of Morality, and find action X. Ah, here, it says 'action X is good'. Thus you did 'good'."

In naturalistic morality the action itself has an innate measure of it's own morality that it carries within itself (and is thus 'objective' in the sense of being applicable in all times, places, and cultures, to all actions), while other kinds of morality are 'external' in the sense that the action must be compared to an external moral standard that exists somewhere else (e.g. commands of God; a code of laws; a Kantian universal etc) in order to measure the morality of the action against the external measure.

However, introducing an external measure causes all sorts of problems, and morality ends up becoming very subjective because people can't agree with each other over what the external measure is. Even among Christians who agree that the external measure is God's will, they have a lot of disagreement over exactly what God wills / how to interpret the bible etc, and their moral code is completely unusable to any pre-Christian societies who lack a copy of God's commands.

Whereas naturalistic morality crops up in every culture because it just 'naturally' arises from the human interest in measuring the intentions behind social interactions. So we see variations on "the Golden Rule" (which is just another way of phrasing naturalistic morality) throughout a massive variety of cultures. And it means there is minimal disagreement about what is moral between different people who adhere to this view - eg I read in the past an essay by Buddhist on objective morality that I 99% agreed with as an atheist. In naturalistic morality, diverging views about what we think God thinks, aren't a source of moral confusion.

[Starlight]

Also, Chrawnus, as a P.S. to my last post, let me note that a Christian can hold to naturalistic morality, and most liberal Christians do. I did when I was a Christian.

I viewed the Pharisees as the group who were trying to hold onto an external moral standard (the commands of God) and enforce that moral standard on others. I saw Jesus and Paul as opposing that Pharisetic idea of divine-command-based morality and instead teaching a love-based "by the spirit, not the letter of the law" morality... ie 'naturalistic morality' in which all actions are assessed in accordance with the spirit of the action and whether it conforms to a love-based (valuing others) motive. So as a Christian I viewed divine-command-based morality as being deliberately and systemically attacked and replaced in the New Testament, by golden-rule-based / love for others / naturalistic morality.

[Adrift]

That doesn't sound at all like "naturalistic morality", or Divine Command Theory actually. And it sounds like you're maybe mixing up Divine Command Theory with something like Theological Volunteerism, which are not synonymous (though you can be a Volunteerist and believe in Divine Command Theory). Also, you make it sound as though most atheists believe in or accept objective morality. That might be true, and I wager that most atheists do so even if they say they don't, but it's certainly not the case that all atheists accept the existence of objective morality. There are plenty of atheists (I imagine a significant percentage) who believe that only subjective or relative morality is possible. Notable atheist like Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, and Michael Ruse all believe that atheism entails a worldview without objective morals. Even a few atheist posters on this site do not/did not believe in objective morality (Carpe Diem, I know, declared himself a subjective moralist). Also, you seem to have some odd ideas about what Christians believe about things like the death penalty and war, and how that should tie into their stand against abortion. Pacifism and pacifists have played a big role in the church from it's roots all the way into the common period. There are plenty of Christians, whole denominations even, that are pacifist. Same with views on capital punishment. I think abortion is rotten, I'm none too fond of capital punishment either, and though I don't think I'm completely sold on pacifism, I believe it has real merit, and I probably lean more that way than other options. But as others have pointed out, views on just war, and just execution are obviously different in kind to abortion.

[Starlight]

That doesn't sound at all like "naturalistic morality", or Divine Command Theory actually

I wasn't bothering to use correct philosophical terminology, I was just using language casually. By 'divine command theory' I just generally meant any and all ideas that morality owes its existence to God and/or his nature and/or his will and/or his commands.

Also, you make it sound as though most atheists believe in or accept objective morality.

I think it would depend how you framed the question as to how most atheists would, on average, respond. I would say that the vast majority of atheists would agree that the the ethical framework I outlined is valid and useful.

Whether they would call it by the word "morality" is another matter. I've seen some who call it "ethics" to distinguish it from religious "morality". Such people, being atheists, would thus view "morality" negatively, as religious clap-trap, or neutrally at best, and consider "ethics" to be the important thing. This approach was quite common up until about the 90s, I think.

But over the last couple of decades, I've seen atheists generally become a lot more assertive in using the word "morality" and moral terms themselves. I suspect a significant majority of atheist millennials would endorse the idea that 'objective morality' exists, and would understand it in the general sorts of terms I outlined in my posts. This surge in atheist belief in naturally-occurring objective morality has been finding expression in popular books like Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape.

it's certainly not the case that all atheists accept the existence of objective morality. There are plenty of atheists (I imagine a significant percentage) who believe that only subjective or relative morality is possible. Notable atheist like Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, and Michael Ruse all believe that atheism entails a worldview without objective morals. Even a few atheist posters on this site do not/did not believe in objective morality (Carpe Diem, I know, declared himself a subjective moralist).

Sure.

Also, you seem to have some odd ideas about what Christians believe about things like the death penalty and war, and how that should tie into their stand against abortion.

Well I think that Christians as a group are all over the spectrum on all three issues. But US Evangelicals as part of the Religious Right in US politics have generally tended to be very anti-abortion, pro-war and pro-death-penalty. This regularly leads to people mocking them for allegedly being "pro-life" when in fact they're often pro-death. Amazing Rando, who I respect very much, and who has over the years usually been the most-similar to me in his approach to theology on this forum, has written a book about this subject. He is a full pacifist.

I was always a pacifist-lite (as anti-war in almost any and all circumstances, but providing for the theoretical possibility of self-defense).

[Adrift]

Correct terminology seems kinda important. And yes, it's extremely obvious you're taking plays from Harris' playbook, still you've consistantly implied that objective morality is universally held among atheists. It isn't. Im not even convinced it's as widespread as you're only now suggesting (whether it's being called ethics or something else).

American Evangelicals make up a relatively small part of the Christian landscape. You consistantly broadbrush all Christians based on what you think Evangelicals believe, which doesn't seem very honest or accurate. And yes, I know Rando's views on this subject. He was replying to me when he discussed his book which I plan on reading as I've always appreciated his theological views and lean toward many of them myself.

[Starlight]

Correct terminology seems kinda important.

Using philosophical technical terms makes communication less clear if not everyone on the board understands the terms.

And yes, it's extremely obvious you're taking plays from Harris' playbook

Well, to be clear, I've never read Harris' work beyond very brief summaries of it, and wouldn't consider myself influenced by it.

Im not even convinced it's as widespread as you're only now suggesting (whether it's being called ethics or something else).

Atheists in this forum regularly go 30 pages arguing for objective morality against seer. If you took any seer thread and any atheist post from it at random and showed it to me, chances are I couldn't tell you whether it was written by Tassman, Jaecp, psychic missile, fm93, Sea of Red, or myself, just by looking at the content of it, because all of us agree on what morality is to such a large extent that our views are all but indistinguishable.

I think a big factor that spurred progress on the issue was gay rights. Christian opposition to gay rights forced atheists in society to think really carefully about why they supported gay rights and why they thought Christian opposition to gay rights was immoral. This caused atheist thinkers and secular politicians around the world to start articulating atheistic ethics using moral terminology to an unprecedented degree.

American Evangelicals make up a relatively small part of the Christian landscape.

In America they are extremely influential. And, likewise on this board.

You consistantly broadbrush all Christians based on what you think Evangelicals believe

To remind you, I was a liberal Christian who leaned strongly towards Eastern Orthodoxy, but who attended evangelical churches and evangelical groups for more than 20 years. I am well aware both of what Evangelicals believe, and of other kinds of and strands of Christianity.

[EvoUK]

To add to Starlights posts above, it does seems as though the term 'objective morality' is used differently between the atheists on this forum he mentioned, and the Christians who discuss it with them, generally speaking.

Whilst I'd agree with his statements about naturalistic morality so far, I'm hesitant to refer to it as objective purely because of the Christian use of the term I usually associate with it.

i tend not to feel the need to defend naturalistic morality, as I have no reason to believe in any theistic alternatives. Whilst for example, Seers perfectly moral law giver God may be arguably more neat & tidy, unless it is proven to exist it's irrelevant.

[JonathanL]

Since Sparko has requested that we don't derail this thread by discussing things that are off topic I won't be responding any further to your posts unless our discussion gets split off and moved to a thread of it's own, Starlight.

[Joel]

A person who is rendered temporarily without a functioning brain would still be a person. It would still be wrong to murder them. Right and wrong would still apply. Therefore "functioning brain" is irrelevant. <snipped>

See above.

You didn't respond to what I said anywhere in your post.

[Joel]

And also innocent of consciousness and of having a functioning brain.

And I before demonstrated that both of those are irrelevant, by pointing out that a person rendered temporarily without either or both of those things would still be a person.

we think it's okay to kill them.

That's perhaps the most honest statement I've ever seen by a pro-choicer.