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This forum is open discussion between atheists and all theists to defend and debate their views on religion or non-religion. Please respect that this is a Christian-owned forum and refrain from gratuitous blasphemy. VERY wide leeway is given in range of expression and allowable behavior as compared to other areas of the forum, and moderation is not overly involved unless necessary. Please keep this in mind. Atheists who wish to interact with theists in a way that does not seek to undermine theistic faith may participate in the World Religions Department. Non-debate question and answers and mild and less confrontational discussions can take place in General Theistics.
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Is religion required for morality and for people to behave morally?
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Originally posted by JimL View PostNo morality is not dependent on god, nor are moral laws flexible or changeable. Murder for instance is understood to be wrong, because it isn't in anyones interests to be murdered.
It can't both be right and wrong, right for you and wrong for others, and that understanding has nothing to do with, or have need of a god for it to be true.Faith is not what we fall back to when reason isn't available. It's the conviction of what we have reason to believe. Greg Koukl
The loss of objectivity in moral thought does not lead to liberation. It leads to oppression. Secular ideologies preach liberty, but they practice tyranny. — Nancy Pearcey
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Originally posted by Papa Zoom View PostI mean by what is actually good apart from any thought you or I may give it.
If something is good or bad in and of itself (it is wrong to kill babies for fun but it is good to feed the hungry) then those moral truths would require God.
Otherwise it's just an opinion.
One can have opinions regarding a fact. One can even have objectively true opinions. To see why, note that an "opinion" is basically just a belief; that is: thinking a claim is true. So, for instance, "I am of the opinion that trees exist" means about the same as saying "I believe that trees exist" or "I think that it's true that "trees exist"". Given this definition of "opinion", one can have an objectively true opinion. For example, a doctor's medical opinion that "you have cancer" can be objectively true. And, of course, one can have subjectively true opinions as well. For example, the following opinion of mine is subjectively true: "Jichard dislikes the taste of broccoli".
Second, facts need not be objective, since facts can be subjective. This is because "fact" means something like either:- a true statement, description, etc.
- whatever it is in virtue of which a statement, description, etc. is true
Now, both readings 1 and 2 are compatible with subjective facts. For example, on reading 1, it is a fact that "some people dislike rape" since "some people dislike rape" is a true statement. And on reading 2, existent people who dislike rape are subjective facts, since those people make statements like "some people dislike rape" true. This is why moral subjectivists can (and often do) still speak of their being moral facts: those subjectivists just treat moral facts as being a type of subjective fact. An upshot of this is that opinions can count as subjective facts."
So you're incorrect when you claim that without God, it's just an opinion. It wouldn't be the. There could be human opinion and the objective facts that make those human opinions true, regardless of whether or nor God exists.
Second, you overlook the fact that your God (if it existed) had opinions. And those opinions saying things are right or wrong in virtue of God's opinion would be subjectivist.
If there is no God, there's no reason to suggest that killing babies for fun is actually wrong - only that as a society we view it as an unacceptable thing.
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Originally posted by Papa Zoom View PostIf I kill you I can steal your land and property and it isn't like that has never happened. By what standard do you say murder is wrong?
(http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~alatus/phil12...ctivism.html):
2. Moral Objectivism: The view that what is right or wrong doesn’t depend on what anyone thinks is right or wrong. That is, the view that the 'moral facts' are like 'physical' facts in that what the facts are does not depend on what anyone thinks they are. Objectivist theories tend to come in two sorts:
(i) Duty Based Theories (or Deontological Theories): Theories that claim that what determines whether an act is morally right or wrong is the kind of act it is.
E.g., Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) thought that all acts should be judged according to a rule he called the Categorical Imperative: "Act only according to that maxim [i.e., rule] whereby you can at the same time will that it become a universal law." That is, he thought the only kind of act one should ever commit is one that could be willed to be a universal law.
(ii) Consequentialist Theories (or Teleological Theories): Theories that claim that what determines whether an act is right or wrong are its consequences.
Utilitarianism is the best known sort of Consequentialism. Its best known defender is John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Essentially, utilitarianism tells us that, in any situation, the right thing to do is whatever is likely to produce the most happiness overall. (The wrong thing to do is anything else.)"
Well I agree with you but you do realize that there are people who feel just the opposite?
If you say something is wrong and it is not just wrong for you but for everyone, to which standard do you appeal?
What is the source of this standard?
Don't say we are because in some cultures they eat their neighbor and in others they love their neighbor. Who is to say which is right and which is wrong?is that claims true or false, and in virtue of what is is it true or falsenot:who said the claim?
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Originally posted by Papa Zoom View PostWhere does this idea of unjust suffering come from? Just because beings can suffer why does that matter? Someone had to decide that suffering of sentient individuals is bad. But what if someone says it's neither good or bad? What if everyone but you think suffering is ok? Then what? Is it still unjust?
By the way, you also just contradicted yourself back when you said things were good or bad independet of what anyone thought:
Originally posted by Papa Zoom View PostI mean by what is actually good apart from any thought you or I may give it. If something is good or bad in and of itself (it is wrong to kill babies for fun but it is good to feed the hungry) then those moral truths would require God. Otherwise it's just an opinion.
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Originally posted by Papa Zoom View PostI mean by what is actually good apart from any thought you or I may give it. If something is good or bad in and of itself (it is wrong to kill babies for fun but it is good to feed the hungry) then those moral truths would require God. Otherwise it's just an opinion.things are good or bad in and of themselvesto saying that:someone has to decide things are bad in order for them to be bad
Originally posted by Papa Zoom View PostWhere does this idea of unjust suffering come from? Just because beings can suffer why does that matter? Someone had to decide that suffering of sentient individuals is bad. But what if someone says it's neither good or bad? What if everyone but you think suffering is ok? Then what? Is it still unjust?
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Originally posted by Papa Zoom View PostI agree but by what standard do you get this idea of justice? That's what I'm driving at. If its source isn't God, then what?
I'm not sure what you thought I meant because I agree with the above statement by you.
So another way to say that is that it is unjust to kill babies. What is the source of this rule?
Apparently people do make this argument all the time. Babies will down syndrome are routinely aborted as are other children with "defects." So apparently those lives don't matter as much as "healthy" children.
[There is only very minor differences between a baby with Down Syndrome and one without. It is because they are so identical that many Down Syndrome Screening Tests and Markers for Down Syndrome have been developed.
However, a Down Syndrome abortion is very different in some respects. Down Syndrome abortions normally involve a wanted baby that has been shown to have Down Syndrome.
......researchers found that where abortion was readily available, the incidence of Down Syndrome dropped by approximately 40%, in comparison to areas where abortion was not more freely available. In other words, it appears from this that at least 40% of parents choose to terminate the pregnancy when a diagnosis of Down Syndrome is made. ] http://www.cdadc.com/ds/down-syndrome-abortion.html
The Nazis killed the Jews because they thought them inferior. Margaret Sanger definitely had views that some lives were more valuable to society than other lives. The history of the world shows this is true in every culture (or most). We may repudiate it but what makes us right and others wrong on this matter?
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Originally posted by Papa Zoom View PostWell that seems to be the question. Does morality depend on you and me and our collective views or is it something else?
If that is what you meant, then morality does not need to "morality depend on you and me and our collective views or is it something else?" For example, take a non-moral statement like dogs exist. That statement is made by me and a number of other humans. But the truth of the statement does not depend on us. Instead, it depends on the presence of certain biological organisms. So the truth of this statement does not depend on you and me and our collective views or God.
This can be extended to moral cases, without one needing to claim that the truth of moral statements depends on you and me and our collective views or God. As I noted elsewhere:
Similarly, the moral realist can point to things like character traits (as per virtue ethics), effects of welfare (as per welfare utilitarianism), etc. as being the sort of things that make moral claims true or false. Here are examples of such positions:
(http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~alatus/phil12...ctivism.html):
2. Moral Objectivism: The view that what is right or wrong doesn’t depend on what anyone thinks is right or wrong. That is, the view that the 'moral facts' are like 'physical' facts in that what the facts are does not depend on what anyone thinks they are. Objectivist theories tend to come in two sorts:
(i) Duty Based Theories (or Deontological Theories): Theories that claim that what determines whether an act is morally right or wrong is the kind of act it is.
E.g., Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) thought that all acts should be judged according to a rule he called the Categorical Imperative: "Act only according to that maxim [i.e., rule] whereby you can at the same time will that it become a universal law." That is, he thought the only kind of act one should ever commit is one that could be willed to be a universal law.
(ii) Consequentialist Theories (or Teleological Theories): Theories that claim that what determines whether an act is right or wrong are its consequences.
Utilitarianism is the best known sort of Consequentialism. Its best known defender is John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Essentially, utilitarianism tells us that, in any situation, the right thing to do is whatever is likely to produce the most happiness overall. (The wrong thing to do is anything else.)"
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Special pleading is only fallacious if there is no substanitive difference in the case. Saying God is categorically like Man is like saying Man is categorically like an ant."He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot
"Forgiveness is the way of love." Gary Chapman
My Personal Blog
My Novella blog (Current Novella Begins on 7/25/14)
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Originally posted by Jichard View PostYou forgot to add any thought anyone gives it, including God. Otherwise, you're special pleading.
Incorrect. It was was good or bad in and of itself when it would not require God, by definition. If X is Y in of X's self, then X does not need something else to be Y.
First, I think you're being a bit loose here with what you mean by "opinion". I'll explain here using something I wrote before:
One can have opinions regarding a fact. One can even have objectively true opinions. To see why, note that an "opinion" is basically just a belief; that is: thinking a claim is true. So, for instance, "I am of the opinion that trees exist" means about the same as saying "I believe that trees exist" or "I think that it's true that "trees exist"". Given this definition of "opinion", one can have an objectively true opinion. For example, a doctor's medical opinion that "you have cancer" can be objectively true. And, of course, one can have subjectively true opinions as well. For example, the following opinion of mine is subjectively true: "Jichard dislikes the taste of broccoli".
Second, facts need not be objective, since facts can be subjective. This is because "fact" means something like either:- a true statement, description, etc.
- whatever it is in virtue of which a statement, description, etc. is true
Now, both readings 1 and 2 are compatible with subjective facts. For example, on reading 1, it is a fact that "some people dislike rape" since "some people dislike rape" is a true statement. And on reading 2, existent people who dislike rape are subjective facts, since those people make statements like "some people dislike rape" true. This is why moral subjectivists can (and often do) still speak of their being moral facts: those subjectivists just treat moral facts as being a type of subjective fact. An upshot of this is that opinions can count as subjective facts."
So you're incorrect when you claim that without God, it's just an opinion. It wouldn't be the. There could be human opinion and the objective facts that make those human opinions true, regardless of whether or nor God exists.
Second, you overlook the fact that your God (if it existed) had opinions. And those opinions saying things are right or wrong in virtue of God's opinion would be subjectivist.
Incorrect. There are plenty of reads that killing babied for fun would be wrong, regardless of whether God exists. You're basically engaged in a false dichotomy, where you act as if the only option are God or cultural relativism. That's blatantly wrong. There are plenty of other options, like virtue ethics, various forms of utilitarianism, and various forms of deontology. So please drop your false dichotomy.
I don't see it as a false dichotomy. I simply don't understand that in a world view that holds to the universe being an accident of nature and that we are all just DNA and electrical impulses in the brain, how that can account for moral truths? It's like I'm hearing "It's wrong to kill because it's wrong to kill!"
In the animal kingdom, a dominate male gorilla will kill off all rivals. That's just the way it is. Is that immoral? If not why not? Where do we humans, just a higher form in the animal kingdom, get this idea of a moral right and wrong and we act as if it's etched in stone somewhere. Unless there is a Supreme Being, I can see no reason to accept anyone's moral POV but my own.Faith is not what we fall back to when reason isn't available. It's the conviction of what we have reason to believe. Greg Koukl
The loss of objectivity in moral thought does not lead to liberation. It leads to oppression. Secular ideologies preach liberty, but they practice tyranny. — Nancy Pearcey
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Originally posted by Jichard View PostThere are plenty of accounts of figuring out what's morally right or morally wrong, that are compatible with atheism and moral objectivism. For instance:
(http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~alatus/phil12...ctivism.html):
2. Moral Objectivism: The view that what is right or wrong doesn’t depend on what anyone thinks is right or wrong. That is, the view that the 'moral facts' are like 'physical' facts in that what the facts are does not depend on what anyone thinks they are. Objectivist theories tend to come in two sorts:
(i) Duty Based Theories (or Deontological Theories): Theories that claim that what determines whether an act is morally right or wrong is the kind of act it is.
E.g., Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) thought that all acts should be judged according to a rule he called the Categorical Imperative: "Act only according to that maxim [i.e., rule] whereby you can at the same time will that it become a universal law." That is, he thought the only kind of act one should ever commit is one that could be willed to be a universal law.
(ii) Consequentialist Theories (or Teleological Theories): Theories that claim that what determines whether an act is right or wrong are its consequences.
Utilitarianism is the best known sort of Consequentialism. Its best known defender is John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Essentially, utilitarianism tells us that, in any situation, the right thing to do is whatever is likely to produce the most happiness overall. (The wrong thing to do is anything else.)"
Irrelevant, since where a claim, standard, etc. comes from has no bearing on whether the claim, standard, etc. is true/false, acurrate/inaccurate, etc. For example, evolution happens is just as true when said by an educated scientist as when it's said by an uneducated 5-year-old. I think a lot of you Christians have the weird idea that somehow a claim has to come from a certain source (ex: a divine source) in order to be objectively true. That's not the case.Faith is not what we fall back to when reason isn't available. It's the conviction of what we have reason to believe. Greg Koukl
The loss of objectivity in moral thought does not lead to liberation. It leads to oppression. Secular ideologies preach liberty, but they practice tyranny. — Nancy Pearcey
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Originally posted by Jichard View PostAnd there's one of the central problems in your position: you're a moral subjectivist, since you think someone has to decide that things are morally bad in order for them to be morally bad. That's like saying someone had to decide that things are dogs in order for them to be dogs. That's not moral objectivism.
By the way, you also just contradicted yourself back when you said things were good or bad independet of what anyone thought:Faith is not what we fall back to when reason isn't available. It's the conviction of what we have reason to believe. Greg Koukl
The loss of objectivity in moral thought does not lead to liberation. It leads to oppression. Secular ideologies preach liberty, but they practice tyranny. — Nancy Pearcey
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Originally posted by Jichard View PostYou said you meant that by "morality", you meant something like:
If that is what you meant, then morality does not need to "morality depend on you and me and our collective views or is it something else?" For example, take a non-moral statement like dogs exist. That statement is made by me and a number of other humans. But the truth of the statement does not depend on us. Instead, it depends on the presence of certain biological organisms. So the truth of this statement does not depend on you and me and our collective views or God.
This can be extended to moral cases, without one needing to claim that the truth of moral statements depends on you and me and our collective views or God. As I noted elsewhere:
Similarly, the moral realist can point to things like character traits (as per virtue ethics), effects of welfare (as per welfare utilitarianism), etc. as being the sort of things that make moral claims true or false. Here are examples of such positions:
(http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~alatus/phil12...ctivism.html):
2. Moral Objectivism: The view that what is right or wrong doesn’t depend on what anyone thinks is right or wrong. That is, the view that the 'moral facts' are like 'physical' facts in that what the facts are does not depend on what anyone thinks they are. Objectivist theories tend to come in two sorts:
(i) Duty Based Theories (or Deontological Theories): Theories that claim that what determines whether an act is morally right or wrong is the kind of act it is.
E.g., Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) thought that all acts should be judged according to a rule he called the Categorical Imperative: "Act only according to that maxim [i.e., rule] whereby you can at the same time will that it become a universal law." That is, he thought the only kind of act one should ever commit is one that could be willed to be a universal law.
(ii) Consequentialist Theories (or Teleological Theories): Theories that claim that what determines whether an act is right or wrong are its consequences.
Utilitarianism is the best known sort of Consequentialism. Its best known defender is John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Essentially, utilitarianism tells us that, in any situation, the right thing to do is whatever is likely to produce the most happiness overall. (The wrong thing to do is anything else.)"Faith is not what we fall back to when reason isn't available. It's the conviction of what we have reason to believe. Greg Koukl
The loss of objectivity in moral thought does not lead to liberation. It leads to oppression. Secular ideologies preach liberty, but they practice tyranny. — Nancy Pearcey
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Originally posted by Jichard View PostBy the way, you just contradicted you, since you moved from saying that:things are good or bad in and of themselvesto saying that:someone has to decide things are bad in order for them to be bad
Please resolve the contradiction.
Without God or a Supreme Being of some kind, there is no reason that I can think of to accept an objective standard for good and bad. Someone somewhere decided that this or that is wrong. I think the moral theories show this to be true. On what basis should I accept any of those theories as true? I agree they sound reasonable and make sense. But what if I felt differently? Why should I care?
I'm probably not doing a very good job with explaining this. I'll have to get some more coffee and give more thought to it later.Faith is not what we fall back to when reason isn't available. It's the conviction of what we have reason to believe. Greg Koukl
The loss of objectivity in moral thought does not lead to liberation. It leads to oppression. Secular ideologies preach liberty, but they practice tyranny. — Nancy Pearcey
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Originally posted by Papa Zoom View PostOk I see the confusion I caused. A thing that is good, like feeding the poor, is good because it emanates from the character of God. It isn't good because God simply commands it and God doesn't simply command it because it is good, it is good because it is a reflection of the very character of God. If something is bad, like murder, it is bad because it violates a standard that emanates from the character of God.
What aspects of God's character/nature make God good?
If you appeal to certain properties of God (such as God character traits), then God isn't required anymore. As the Christian philosopher Wes Morriston notes:
Of course, you could give other responses, but they'll result in other problems I've gone over elsewhere:
Unless one opts for something like divine simplicity, then God has multiple, non-identical properties. For example, on one traditional definition of "God", God has the properties of being omnipotent, being omnipresent, being omniscient, and being omnibenevolent, amongst other properties. Now, you seem to be claiming that God has the property of being morally good. In response to this claim of your's, one can ask "in virtue of what does God have the property of being morally good?" You could answer this question in a number of ways. For example, you could claim that God's moral goodness supervenes on other properties God has. Or you could claim that God's moral goodness is identical to other properties God has. Or you could claim that it's simply a brute fact that God is morally good, and there's nothing more to say on that. Or... So let's survey some of those options:
- You could say that God is morally good in virtue of other properties God has, such as God having certain character traits (ex: being fair, being merciful, etc.), God acting to promote the welfare of sentient life, etc. This is a very plausible option, and is the path taken by various Christian philosophers such as Wes Morriston. This option also makes sense of the following thought experiment:Imagine a vicious, psychopathic deity who was also omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc. This deity commands that people do vicious things (like rape and genocide), just because that deity enjoys watching the carnage. Is that deity morally good?The obvious right answer is "no". And option 1 explains why: it's because the deity lacks certain character traits, and acts in a way that willfully, needlessly harms sentient life. Option 1 also has the further benefit of making God's goodness intelligible. So instead of making vacuous statements like "God is morally good because God is like God" that rob "is morally good" of any meaningful moral semantic content, one can instead say that "God is morally good in virtue of God's mercy, justice, etc." That actually gives some content to God's goodness. Of course, this means forfeiting the claim that moral properties can exist only if God exists. After all, if non-God things have the features in virtue of which God was morally good (ex: having certain character traits), then those non-God things can be morally good, even if God does not exist.
- You could say that God is morally good in virtue of other properties God has, properties which God alone has, such as God being omnipotent, being omniscient, etc. This move suffers from a number of problems. For example:A) It undermines moral arguments for God's existence and it leaves theists susceptible to the very claims they use to to support their moral argument. After all, theists normally try to get their moral arguments off the ground by noting the existence of moral properties instantiated by non-God things. For instance: claiming that saving someone in the Holocaust was morally good. However, option 2 undermines this move, since on option 2 that action does not count as morally good because only God counts as morally good and that action is not God. And that means anyone who things that action was morally good, will have a ready-made objection to option 2: point out the numerous examples of morally good things that are not God, including the action I just reference. Really, option 1 commits theists to position very close to moral nihilism, where they they deny the existence of moral properties such as being morally good, "being morally right, etc. except when those features are had by God.
B) Saying that "God is morally good because God is omnipotent" implausible confuses might with right. And it makes no sense to claim that a being is morally good because that being is omniscient, or omnipresent, or... After all, as I noted when discussing option 1, a psychopathic, vicious deity could be omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, etc. yet it would make no sense to call such a deity morally good just because it had those features. Being knowledgeable, or being everywhere, or being powerful, or... doesn't make one morally good. - You could saying that "God is morally good" is a brute moral truth, and cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else. But this response also has it's own problems. For example:A) Option 3 makes God's goodness morally unintelligible. After all, on option 3, you can't specify what you mean by "is morally good" beyond just saying that it refers to one of God's properties. There's no moral content there.
B) You've made claims like "God is morally good" largely empty, since on option 3, that statement boils down to saying something like "God has a property that God has". Such a statement would be true regardless of what God was. For example, it'd be true even if God was a vicious psychopath or a turkey BLT sandwich.
C) Unless you want to indict yourself for special pleading, you'll be unable to object to an atheist's position simply by saying because the atheist appeal to brute moral truths. After all, you've just appealed to brute moral truths as well. For example, an atheist, hedonistic utilitarian might say that it's simply a brute, unexplainable moral truth "Pleasure is morally good". And if you say that hey, you can't to brute moral truths, since brute truths are not allowed, you'd be engaged in special pleading (Eric Wielenberg has made related point against William Lane Craig's position).
D) Your brute moral truths introduce unneeded complexity, with little-to-no-compensating benefit (Wes Morriston has made this point before).
Without God or a Supreme Being of some kind, there is no reason that I can think of to accept an objective standard for good and bad.
Someone somewhere decided that this or that is wrong.
I think the moral theories show this to be true.
On what basis should I accept any of those theories as true? I agree they sound reasonable and make sense. But what if I felt differently? Why should I care?
Comment
- You could say that God is morally good in virtue of other properties God has, such as God having certain character traits (ex: being fair, being merciful, etc.), God acting to promote the welfare of sentient life, etc. This is a very plausible option, and is the path taken by various Christian philosophers such as Wes Morriston. This option also makes sense of the following thought experiment:
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