Wow! *Ad hominem *attack about my “Christian virtue”? Where did that come from?
For there to be a truth of the matter about something, that something must be expressible in a claim/proposition which can be true or false.
I wrote:
But remember, Ender, our working assumption is that God doesn’t exist (as ridiculous as that sounds!
), not that people disbelieve that God exists. Those are different assumptions, so don’t conflate them.I am only interested in conversations where I am treated with the respect that I try to show others. If there is not that mutual respect, I can’t see why else you should want to have a conversation with me unless you are performing for an audience (you’re “we.”). I suspect that is what you are up to, and I’m just not interested. You are welcome to think that you are so intellectually powerful that I just can’t handle the challenge you offer. Perhaps your ego needs that.
That’s all I said, so don’t put words into my mouth.
“Relative truth” is a nonsensical notion; we’ve already gone over this. And we are not just talking about any such agreement/disagreement in tribal beliefs. We are talking about the almost unanimous agreement in the truth of the moral principles I listed in the other post. Further, I already said cultural differences on how each of these principles are applied may vary. But the principles themselves don’t vary much at all from culture to culture. I don’t know why you fail to notice this. For instance, almost all cultures accept some form of modesty as a norm that tells individuals how they should behave with respect to one another. But the interpretation of this principle will vary from culture to culture. It is permissible for an American woman to show her face in public, while a Muslim woman is expected to cover her face. They both adopt the value of modesty; it just gets interpreted differently. But I don’t see how these differences in interpretation of the norm counts as evidence that the norm doesn’t exist at all. This is absurd.
But Anti is wrong. Objective truth can be known. The two of you either don’t know it, don’t want to know it, or don’t want to try to get to know it. The laxity or stubborness manifested between you two is not everyone else’s problem.
What more do you want with the former? We can’t demonstrate the existence of objective morality in a syllogism, or verify that it exists empirically, so we need other arguments. But if these arguments are just not good enough, then join Anti’s team.
Which “sioux” tribe are you referring to? And are talking about the “sioux” before or after the white-man destroyed their homes and their peoples? I suspect this is a myth invented by others who hated them. The Sioux who hunted buffalo before they were introduced to the white-man, had a tremendous respect for all human and animal life, and this great respect is found in all their ceremonies. So this claim is totally inconsistent with everything else we can document about their cultural practices before the advent of the white-man.
Your *ad hominems *are passionate, but they don’t persuade. Try them on someone else less-suspecting.
I don’t mean to distort what you say here, only to investigate it further so I can generalize it to a specific moral principle. Would you agree that your statement also means this?
Fine, whatever. I am interested in discussing the concept of morality, not getting involved in debates about my syntax. I don’t know whether moral assertions have truth-value, I have not yet seen what I consider to be a reasonable argument - let alone a convincing one, and I do not believe that one will be forthcoming because I don’t believe one can be made.
*Great googly moogly. OK (1) Yes, (2)True. A baby like some others lacks comprehension.
You fail to see the implications of actual subjectivity.
I didn’t mean to do that. if I had put them there at least I’d be able to understand them
gaaahh OK butI really think you know what I meant. Phrase it however you like.
This does seem somewhat over broad. Is it is or is it isn’t I’m becoming mad as the Hatter universally believed that the deliberate killing of an innocent person is immoral?
The principles of lion behavior don’t vary much at all from pride to pride either; do you take this as evidence that they have objective moral laws?
The fact that we are unpersuaded by your arguments should not be taken as evidence of laxity or stubbornness on our side. We believe there is a more likely alternative explanation.
OK, this is progress. If you’re saying that the existence of objective morality cannot be proven then I assume you intend to rely on things like inference and probablity - right?
That would be the Sioux as they were first apprehended by traders and frontiersmen but since you believe it doesn’t really matter if my claim is valid or not I won’t bother to try to prove it.
Why? What makes it immoral? Your whole argument is based on things being “commonly accepted as morally permissible”, so what makes their beliefs immoral? Because their beliefs are less common that the beliefs of the larger family of tribes? How is this not morality by majority vote?
We’ve already agreed that “human life is precious” is an axiom. We accept this without proof. It is the sort of unproven axiom that all rational systems need to start from such as the law of noncontradiction. Just as mathematical systems are completely rational though necessarily rely on unproven assumptions, so must moral reasoning. Like mathematics, it is no less rational for being based on such axioms as “human life is precious.”
If you want to be able to communicate well and avoid a lot of frustration, paying attention to syntax isn’t optional. Same applies if you wish to be able to recognize a “reasonable argument” when you see one.
So the baby won’t understand because she lacks comprehension? That doesn’t seem like a very informative reply! Since this is the best you can come up with, let me suggest a better answer: the baby - like some others (I’m glad you noticed this!) - doesn’t understand because she lacks mastery of the relevant concepts (‘exists,’ ‘does not exist,’ ‘picture of,’ ‘horse,’ etc.). Agree or disagree?
You seem to think that atheism is equivalent to subjectivism and/or materialism. It is not. Therefore none of your claims here are relevant. Sorry!
huh?..Lions are not moral creatures making moral claims. Nor does morality, if it exists, apply to lions. Totally disanalogous.
Your* flat-out refusal * earlier to research into the Categorical Imperative and Utilitarian Ethics is evidence of laxity and stubbornness. But certainly no one can force you to accept an argument either.
Yes, that’s what we’ve been doing from the start! It is very improbable that people would consistently engage in the behavior of making what they take to be objective moral claims throughout history if objective morality didn’t exist. The obeisance to and regular practice of engaging in ethics, law, and statements of value show that people take morality as basic fundamental part of human behavior, culture, and religion. This phenomenon very strongly suggests that it is more likely that objective morality exists than that it doesn’t exist.
No. You are not paying attention. Unanimous agreement **that **there are moral principles is one kind of evidence that objective morality exists. Unanimous agreement on which moral principles are the correct ones is not necessarily evidence that those are, in fact, the correct ones.
If they believed that it was also morally permissible to torture people for fun, and not merely just a matter of amusement, then yes, this would be evidence that objective morality exists. But it would not be evidence that torturing people for fun was morally permissable. I strongly recommend getting this distinction clear.
Don’t think I said anything about materialism. Atheism - that is the complete denial of the absolute - implies subjectivism. Therefore all of my claims are relevant. No need to apologize.You seem to think that atheism is equivalent to subjectivism and/or materialism. It is not. Therefore none of your claims here are relevant. Sorry!
Many would describe their atheism as a mere lack of belief in any supernatural deities such as the state in which each of us enters the world, and there are all sorts of philosophical positions that atheists hold, so I wouldn’t make any such generalizations about what atheists deny. (I think very few of us would identify as subjectivists.) At any rate, defining what atheists can and can not believe is a debate that we are currently banned from having in this forum. It would be best to stay on topic.
Leela’s right, no atheism allowed.
Yeah, like the Nietzschean Will-to-Power…common to all things from stones to atheism
I do not accept this and see no reason why I should. Given a godless universe, the evolution of every creature would really be utterly accidental and, on that basis, I don’t know why we should accept that a human life is any more precious than that of a banana slug.
Yes, I understand the use of axioms; that’s why I started this discussion with the axiom that God does not exist. Acceptance of your axiom pretty much nullifies the significance of mine and that’s not the discussion I want to have. To me, the significance of a universe without God is that it is not possible to conclude that human life is precious.