Non-theistic foundation of morality?

[Charlemagne_III]

Luckily for us, evolution doesn’t control us any more. We control evolution. We have taken the random element out of the equation. But, and this is the point, we still are animals formed by the evolutionary process.

Oh my, we are in the position of intelligently designing our own evolution but it is impossible that anyone intelligently designed us to exist?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Now if you want to say that the church agrees with one position or another, then I have zero problem with that. As long as you can explain the reason behind it. If it is simply ‘God says so’, it will be ignored.

As I think it was you I pointed this out to early on (maybe someone else) the vast majority of human beings have neither the time nor the inclination nor the ability to rationally reinvent the moral wheel. This seems to be what you are prescribing. It isn’t going to happen, forget it.

 

[Bradski]

There is not catechism put out by the humanists…

un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

 

[Bradski]

Oh my, we are in the position of intelligently designing our own evolution but it is impossible that anyone intelligently designed us to exist?

Next time you put a jacket on because it is cold, you are bucking evolution. We’ve been doing it for tens of thousands of years. You just didn’t realise it.

 

[Bradski]

As I think it was you I pointed this out to early on (maybe someone else) the vast majority of human beings have neither the time nor the inclination nor the ability to rationally reinvent the moral wheel. This seems to be what you are prescribing. It isn’t going to happen, forget it.

So you just go with what you are told and do not have the time or the inclination or the ability to work out yourself if something is wrong or not? Or maybe you are just talking about the great unwashed. You yourself are different.

You DO have the time and the inclination and the ability to use reasonable arguments and all available information to work out what is wrong. At least, I hope to hell you do.

In amy case, which do you think is the better method, Charles?

 

[Tomdstone]

Pose a moral problem which has no definitive answer from the Church.

Is it moral for the USA to maintain an arsenal of nuclear weapons, such as the atomic or hydrogen bombs?

 

[Bradski]

Is it moral for the USA to maintain an arsenal of nuclear weapons, such as the atomic or hydrogen bombs?

I think that you might find that Charles believes that the vast majority of human beings have neither the time nor the inclination nor the ability to rationally work that out. It isn’t going to happen, forget it.

But Charles will have an opinion . And it will be based on reasonable arguments. They may be based on what the church has said, but those reasons themselves will be based on reasonable arguments.

Kinda hard to get away from, aren’t they.

 

[o_mlly]

un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

Secular law or positive law, I think, cannot pretend to differentiate killing from murder. We need God’s revelation, a vantage point beyond the human condition, to guide us to certain knowledge of human rights, especially the right to life.

The philosophy of legal positivism prevents arguing for human rights outside the legal system per se. Legal systems cannot criticize each other. Under legal positivism, if legal system A, claims that legal system B is immoral it must do so only from a reference to itself. System B does not recognize the validity of system A, so the
criticism by system A of system B is correctly disregarded as baseless by system B.

The Nazis leaders used legal positivism to defend themselves at Nuremberg. The only reason, the Nazis claimed, that they found themselves in the defendants’ chair at Nuremberg was that they had the misfortune of losing the war.

The Nazis granted that their legal system was different than the Allies, and granted that fundamental German values were different than the Allies, one of which was the supremacy of the Aryan race. They incorporated their values into their laws that included the de-valuing of Jews relative to Aryans. The Nazis argued, therefore, that the systematic elimination of Jews was, in the German legal system, entirely valid. And, since, under legal positivism, the Allies could not judge the Nazis legal system as invalid, the Allies could not judge the defendants acts as criminal.

Jackson, the lead prosecutor, had to depart from and ultimately debunk the philosophy of legal positivism and proceed to a higher authority, a new and higher vantage point to prosecute the legal system of another country. He appealed to the basic principles of civilization in order to prosecute the jurisprudence of the Nazi legal system. To transcend human law, Jackson, of course, had to take recourse to religion, to revelation.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Is it moral for the USA to maintain an arsenal of nuclear weapons, such as the atomic or hydrogen bombs?

Go ask the catechism of the American Humanist Association.

un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

I think you will come up empty.

I have already cited the *Catechism of the Catholic Church *on this.

 

[Tomdstone]

Go ask the catechism of the American Humanist Association.

So the question does not have a definitive answer from the Church?

Pose a moral problem which has no definitive answer from the Church.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I think that you might find that Charles believes that the vast majority of human beings have neither the time nor the inclination nor the ability to rationally work that out. It isn’t going to happen, forget it.

But Charles will have an opinion . And it will be based on reasonable arguments. They may be based on what the church has said, but those reasons themselves will be based on reasonable arguments.

Kinda hard to get away from, aren’t they.

To mix a couple of metaphors, you are O.K. with educated people who have the time to push the moral wheel, but so far as the great unwashed are concerned, they can stay unwashed?

Your reference to the Humanist document was useless. How are the great unwashed supposed to be guided by it when they are perplexed by a moral question? It is an
unmitigated mash of glittering generalities.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

So the question does not have a definitive answer from the Church?

Read post # 98.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Jackson, the lead prosecutor, had to depart from and ultimately debunk the philosophy of legal positivism and proceed to a higher authority, a new and higher vantage point to prosecute the legal system of another country. He appealed to the basic principles of civilization in order to prosecute the jurisprudence of the Nazi legal system. To transcend human law, Jackson, of course, had to take recourse to religion, to revelation.

It was not difficult to debunk the legal positivism of the Nazis. At the Nuremberg Trials the American prosecutors used natural law morality to do so. Spencer Tracy’s *Judgment at Nuremberg * (for those who need a refresher course on this subject) was a masterful refutation of the German jurists on trial who had used legal positivism in their own defense.

 

[Tomdstone]

Read post # 98.

That indicates that it is immoral for the USA to maintain an arsenal of nuclear weapons, even if North Korea, China and Pakistan has them, the USA must disarm according to the Roman Catholic teaching?

 

[Tomdstone]

Pose a moral problem which has no definitive answer from the Church.

Is burning a heretic at the stake immoral and against the will of God?

 

[Bahman]

I’ve often heard it said that while you can be good whether you believe in God or not, God offers the only possibility of a foundation for morality. Supposedly, in the absence of God morality is reduced to mere opinion that is not sufficient to justify judging any act as good or evil.

I think there can be a non-theistic ground for objective morality. Morality is rooted in our human need to trust each other and thereby facilitate closer cooperation and greater achievements than we could gain by ourselves. Someone who treated morality as mere opinion (and used that for selfish advantage in every situation) would be too changeable to be trustworthy, and wouldn’t receive cooperation, losing out on the gains from said cooperation.

This idea supplies the benefits of positing God as the source of morality (unchanging and negative consequences for failure to act well) without positing a transcendent entity or realm whose mysterious existence is the source of morality.

Thoughts?

We can understand morality by practicing rationality. Hence there is need for God to learn morality.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

That indicates that it is immoral for the USA to maintain an arsenal of nuclear weapons, even if North Korea, China and Pakistan has them, the USA must disarm according to the Roman Catholic teaching?

What that indicates is that if all nations do not disarm, nuclear Armageddon may well be just around the corner.

Universal suicide would be a sin. What does the Humanist Catechism teach us about nuclear weapons? Does it teach that we should arm to the teeth or that we should get all nations to disarm? I’d like to know. Catholic teaching is well known.

For several years before he died I knew Bishop Leroy Matthiesen who won the Pax Christi Award for his successful efforts to organize the American bishops to actively oppose proliferation of nuclear weapons. He deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, but they had just given it to President Obama. So now we are at war with Isis.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Is burning a heretic at the stake immoral and against the will of God?

Yes, and the reason why no heretics have been burned at the stake lately is that more than half the population would have to be burned.

Plato recommended that atheists, given several chances to recant and still persistent, should be executed. I disagree with him too. So you see even men with brilliant minds can be wrong, so mere rationality is not the final teacher of right and wrong, as Bahman supposes. Christ did not advocate killing those who reject him.

If they prefer to choose hell over heaven, that is their choice. It’s called free will, and unlike many atheistic humanists who do not believe in free will, we believe that actions have consequences, some of them eternal consequences that only a fool would risk suffering.

 

[PRmerger]

Evolutionary ethics devolve (forgive the pun) into lifeboat ethics – as you, yourself, have demonstrated a number of times. That is because the assumption of atheism is that human beings are on our own as far as existence and morality is concerned.

Yep.

Where there is no ultimate plan or teleology built into existence itself (which is the fundamental difference between any atheistic moral system and any theistic moral system) then the ground rules can be shifted very quickly.

Egg-zactly.

Non-theistic foundations for morality means that you write the rules. Therefore, you can change them and are not bound by them.

Like when I played “pretend” with my 7yr old DD, who made all the rules when we played. First she’ll say, “You have to step on these books laying on the floor 'cause the carpet is hot lava!” Then, suddenly, she’ll exempt herself and say, “But now I can step on the carpet 'cause the carpet is not hot lava anymore.”

…because she suddenly wanted one of those books.

That’s what relativism is. Playing pretend with the rules of morality.

Absolutism means that God writes the rules.

 

[PRmerger]

You constantly confuse the result of reasonable arguments with personal preferences. Reasonable arguments lead to reasonable conclusions not to an individual’s preference.

Ah. So you are arguing for moral absolutes then?

I had a personal,preference to smack a guy in a bar last night because…well, for whatever. But intenal reasonable arguments persuaded me that what I wanted to do was wrong. So I didn’t.

Yes, it certainly does sound like you are arguing for this.

Good for you, friend!

That’s one step closer towards Truth!