Thought Experiment

[Eightcrackers]

Whether people think morality is objective or subjective, they still think it's morality, and those who differ on this point will still agree that murder and rape etc etc are wrong.

I wonder if you confuse subjective with arbitrary?

Conflate, more likely.

 

[Whatsisface]

Conflate, more likely.

Thank you for the more precise word.

 

[Eightcrackers]

Thank you for the more precise word.

Confusion is accidental.
Conflation is on purpose.

 

[El Cid]

Here's what you said … "Such as it containing purposes, such as eyes for seeing and ears for hearing",

Evolution explains why we have eyes and ears in two ways. They give a survival advantage and the well understood process of evolution explains how they came about.

Yes, but how can an unguided purposeless process create things with purposes such as survival? Throughout all of human experience, purposes have only come from a personal intelligence. Your view not only goes against logic, it goes against all the empirical evidence. Unless you can provide an empirical example of a purpose coming from a mindless process. I am all ears if you can.

 

[Eightcrackers]

Throughout all of human experience, purposes have only come from a personal intelligence.

Black swan fallacy.

 

[Whatsisface]

Yes, but how can an unguided purposeless process create things with purposes such as survival?

Evolution is not unguided. Traits from random mutations are selected for if they give a survival advantage, because the creature that has a survival advantage will be more likely to survive, reproduce and pass on that survival advantage. The environment does the guiding.

That you ask this question shows you have not studied evolution at all, you seem to have no understanding of it. Am I right? Is that a fair position from which to criticise it?

Throughout all of human experience, purposes have only come from a personal intelligence.

That's just not true. We humans have some basic survival instincts that give our lives purpose, but they don't come from a personal intelligence, they are a part of our basic nature. We don't sit down and think about eating for the purpose of survival in order to get the instinct to eat, the instinct is there from birth.

We share this instinct to eat which gives our lives a purpose with animals who don't have human intelligence but have said purpose to eat.

 

[El Cid]

t has all the characteristics of an effect.

But this doesn't demonstrate that it is an effect. Things in the universe operate by cause and effect, but that doesn't mean that the universe as a whole is an effect.

It doesnt prove it is an effect, but it is evidence it is an effect. If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and looks like a duck, most likely it is a duck.

In the scientific world you need more than what you've given to establish something as true, and rightly so. If science operated on "It has all the characteristics of … " it wouldn't get anywhere.

Huh? That is what scientists do everyday. They study the characteristics of things to see if they are an effect and then use those characteristics to determine what caused it.

 

[El Cid]

Where do you get that number from?!

It is when the first humans appeared on the earth.

 

[Eightcrackers]

It is when the first humans appeared on the earth.

And you know that he has been telling the truth for two million years?
How?

If he lied to a human a million years ago, how would you know?

(Also, how do you square this "two milliion years" with the Garden of Eden story?
Did that happen two million years ago?)

 

[Whatsisface]

It doesnt prove it is an effect, but it is evidence it is an effect. If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and looks like a duck, most likely it is a duck.

Huh? That is what scientists do everyday. They study the characteristics of things to see if they are an effect and then use those characteristics to determine what caused it.

Yes, but there's a difference between going on what seems like an effect, and rigorously investigating to find out if it is. Despite our investigations
we still don't know if the universe is an effect.

 

[El Cid]

Evolution explains conscious beings, and conscious beings are the ones that impute purpose.

How can unconsciousness produce consciousness? Makes no sense logically.

Without conscious beings (and even with them, IMO), matter is just stupidly obeying the laws of physics.


Purpose is intentionality. No conscious beings, no intention, no purpose.

Exactly, if purpose exists in nature then it must have been created by a conscious being, right?

 

[Eightcrackers]

How can unconsciousness produce consciousness? Makes no sense logically.

Because you draw a hard line between the two, disallowing development from one to the other.

How can a sand non-pile become a sand pile, one grain at a time?

Exactly, if purpose exists in nature then it must have been created by a conscious being, right?

"Must"? No - why?

Purpose comes the moment thinking beings are capable of it.

 

[El Cid]

Then your "No' is meaningless. So for all practical purposes your no is actually yes. Because according to your moral system if the majority favors it then it will be done.

Even if true, the fact that it is done does not mean that I consider it to be moral.

But subjective morality is a slippery slope to tyranny.

El Cid said:
No, I am referring to deeper moral principles like human equality and freedom of conscience. Where did Christianity borrow those principles from?

People that espoused them before Christianity appeared on the scene.

What people espoused them before Christianity?

You might as well ask "where did the Jason Momoa Fan Club get its love for Jason Momoa?"

That makes no sense. Again, what people espoused them before Christianity?

 

[El Cid]

What makes God moral?

His character.

 

[Whatsisface]

His character.

Then that makes morality based on God subjective.

 

[El Cid]

No, you seem to misunderstand causality. Characteristics produced by the cause CAN exist in the effect, just the cause itself cannot be part of the effect. Other persons and characteristics that were produced by the cause CAN exist as part of the effect.

This creates a conundrum for the Christian in that he must then sort out what characteristics found here in the effect actually represent the character of the cause. Evil, disease, suffering, and sin are all now the table as a characteristic of the cause. Scripture tries to explain this reality away with an unwarranted hypothesis concerning our behavior. Our behavior is also on the table as an effect directly inherited from the cause.

No, a being with Gods characteristics can easily create free will beings that are totally responsible for their behavior. And if humans have free will then moral evil and sin is their direct responsibility and will experience the natural consequences of committing those acts.

El Cid said:
How do you know this? People have experienced the bottom of the ocean, how do you know people have not experienced the transcendent?

Because the varying anecdotal descriptions of those that have said they experienced the transcendent all ascribe mundane and personally anthropomorphic familiar characteristics to it. People who have not seen the bottom of the ocean might describe it, based on what they see on its surface, to be smooth and wavy as opposed to to the completely dissimilar and chaotic landscape that is hidden beneath it. This is how your anthropomorphic god gets its characteristics too. He resembles a willful sentient mind... just like us.

Maybe it is the other way around, maybe we got our willful sentient mind from Him. In fact, that is more likely given that we have characteristics that natural selection would not likely select for. And one of them is a willful sentient mind. The most successful species on the planet based on the largest amount of genetic material passed on do not have that characteristic.

How do you know this? Is it because the characteristics of the cause resemble the effect?... like evil, disease, suffering and sin, or the behaviors inherent in us which constitutes an inherited effect of the cause?

See above.

El Cid said:
Maybe but it is unlikely that they would restrict sex outside of marriage and only with your wife. And not even allow thinking about having sex with someone who is not your wife. And not even allow so called white lies.

Not true. Another part of human nature is jealousy, and the effects of jealousy are bad for a society as well. Thus its codification. The emotion , and thus our need to address it, emerges from our living human reality, not from cold and amoral stone tablets.

No, without jealousy we would have never been monogamous and scientists have said that heterosexual monogamy was the main reason early humans survived.

El Cid said:
Yes, but we are the result of an impersonal amoral process if atheism is true. So anything that emerges from us, is ultimately from that same process.

Same goes for your God then as stated in point 1. If we as atheists cannot separate out the amorality of our formation from the morality which emerges from us anyway then either can you separate the origin of evil, disease, suffering and sin from God. Pick you poison. Goose or Gander. Be consistent.

No, see above if we are created in the image of free will being, then we are more likely to have a free will. If we are the result of predetermined chemical reactions then we dont have free will and there is therefore no such thing as morality.

El Cid said:
And if is just emerges from us then it is relative and subjective so that you have no rationally objective basis for condemning Hitler.

Not if the characteristics are common to us all such as the need to self promote and self protect at the same time. Then these become human objectives. Hitler is a perfect example of my point, not yours. Hitler's act of self promotion to save his nation from the effect of the Jew violated the self protection of the Jew. Proper moral action is not dictated by one side of a human interchange. The Jews fought back as much as they were capable of. Then the rest of the world saw the threat that such a human philosophy as Hitler's would effect on them as well. Needless to say... the moral philosophy I am ascribing to here was proven true. Hitler was destroyed by his self promotion when it was evaluated outside the vacuum of his myopic side of the moral equation.

Exactly, if morality is totally tied to the desires of the self then it is just a personal preference and subjective. So according to your view the Jews and Hitler had the same basis for morality, just different ways of obtaining their desires, so there is no objective basis for saying who was right and who was wrong.

El Cid said:
No, it is more rational to believe that our morality is derived from a pre-existing morality.

Obedience to supernatural fiat would be amoral. It would exist without any human emergent reason and therfore be meaningless.

No, it is rational to believe that the creator and designer of something would know how that something functions the best, so it is with our Creator.

El Cid said:
I see nothing above that refutes my statement.

It all does.

Where?

El Cid said:
Do you consider Hitlers self protection mechanisms by promoting his people wrong? If so, why? Since you said it is a valid morality above if it is based on such things.

Yes, because it violated common drives of self protection for his victims. Again, proper moral action is not dictated by one side of a human interchange. Eventually the wider societies saw the threat to their own potential self protection and ended Hitler's practice. If the rest of the world agreed with Hitler, you would still have the Jews internal drives to self protect to consider. Even if the Jews were wiped out, because of their drives to self protect, regardless of their capacity to act on it, this alone would never have made Hitler's act moral.

See above how a self based morality is subjective and ultimately meaningless since there is no basis to judge who is right or wrong.

El Cid said:
See above about Hitlers self promotion and self protection of his society.

Refuted above.

Where?

El Cid said:
If there is no moral God then morals are not objectively real.

Transcendent fiat makes all acts of obedience amoral. Objective morality only emerges from real human experience when we discover and navigate common objective realities that define what we are.

Since our Creator designed and defined what we are, He would know what is best for us and how to produce our greatest flourishing.

 

[El Cid]

Flowers have objective, mathematical symmetry.
Humans consider objective, mathematical symmetry beautiful.
Therefore, the beauty of flowers is objective.

Still not a valid argument. Do you in fact have a valid argument which reaches the conclusion, "the beauty of flowers is objective."

Not my argument. My argument is all humans recognize beauty, beauty can be described objectively with a mathematical formula therefore beauty objectively exists.

 

[Komodo]

Not my argument. My argument is all humans recognize beauty, beauty can be described objectively with a mathematical formula therefore beauty objectively exists.

P1 All humans recognize beauty
P2 Beauty can be described objectively
C Beauty exists objectively.

Still not a valid argument, because the conclusion does not follow from the premises. The conclusion which does follow from the premises is, "All humans recognize something (beauty) which can be described objectively." That's not the same thing as "which exists objectively."

If there were such a thing as a mathematical formula which described all things which humans unanimously recognized as beautiful -- and I'm certain that no such formula exists -- it wouldn't be the formula for "what is objectively beautiful," it would be the formula for "what is subjectively beautiful, to human beings,"

 

[Komodo]

Not my argument. My argument is all humans recognize beauty, beauty can be described objectively with a mathematical formula therefore beauty objectively exists.

More particularly, your argument is invalid because it rests on the assumption that "if beauty can be described objectively, then beauty exists objectively." This in turn rests on the assumption that "if a description of something has some property, then the thing being described also contains that property; so, if a description of beauty has the property of objectivity, then beauty itself must have the property of objectivity."

But this assumption is false; descriptions of things often have properties which the things being described don't have. For example, a description of beauty can be grammatical, but that doesn't mean that beauty is grammatical; a description of love can be cold and detached, but that doesn't mean that love is cold and detached; and so on.

 

[Whatsisface]

See above how a self based morality is subjective and ultimately meaningless since there is no basis to judge who is right or wrong.

You are conflating subjective with arbitrary. If you were right, you would see people saying in all sincerity, no, honestly, you've got it all wrong, rape is perfectly moral after all.

We don't see this.

One basis to judge whether something is wrong is the harm it produces.