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tonyrey
Guest
The propensity for telling stories is a two-edged sword. By far the tallest story is that of “the tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing”!
- Status
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prodigalson2011
Guest
Atheist:
Its not rational to believe in God for its emotional reward, because it does not relfect reality as it truly is.
Theist:
Therefore it is not objectively wrong to sacrifice the life of an innocent human object if it benefits the pragmatic needs of the pack.
Atheist:
By the word object i assume you mean a person. I find that idea subjectively repulsive and so do most people.
Theist:
There are only objects in existence and their usefulness is relative. Perhaps it is repulsive to you and many other human objects, however, if the goal is truly pragmatic-survival, then it would be irrational not to sacrifice the life of an innocent human object for the pragmatic needs of the pack. Since, relative to the survival of a group, an individual human object has no true value beyond that which is pragmatic and utilitarian; and to look at human objects as being anything above that in their identity, is irrational since it does not reflect reality as it truly is.
Atheist:
I choose to close my eyes to this.
Theist:
I thought you would do that
Atheist:
But we don’t live in that kind of society; people treat me like a person, not a pragmatic-utility.
Theist:
If they treat you as a being with a distinct objective universal value in comparison to other non-human objects apart from purely pragmatic evaluations, then it is because they are delusional, and for the sake of rationality, like the existence of God, we should shun that kind of thinking despite losing the emotional rewards that come with promoting such a delusion. Even if that means the collapse of human civilization.
…
In fact, when an atheist is finally honest about the consequences of accepting metaphysical naturalism, he or she knows that many of the value driven fundamental concepts that are most important to the identity of human civilization, including our dignity as people, is robbed of its value and existence. Its not only God that we lose.
No normal rational human being actually wants this to be the case and they would demand evidence of metaphysical naturalism once they understand what it actually means for them as people. A personal object does not only form attachments to children because of instinct alone or because of some kind of pragmatic evaluation. They also form attachments because they intuitively believe that they morally ought to. They intuitively recognize that family and children have an objective value beyond simply that which is pragmatic and useful. And this is made evident by the fact that men and women try to raise children precisely in that image, that they ought to be loving and caring. They do not teach these things to children simply because they represent a set of useful pragmatic laws. They teach these thing irrespective of whether or not they are useful for survival or society.
In other-words, as much as people might deny Gods existence, they do not act like God does not exist. This is the hypocrisy, irrationality, and denial, that flows through the veins of the New Atheism.
A bit of anecdotal support for you, from my favorite case study in cognitive dissonance, Messr. Dawkins:Exhibit A:
“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
"…it’s very difficult to come to an absolute definition of what’s moral and what is not… There is no absolute reason why we should believe that [it]'s true."
vs.
“…he [Pope Benedict XVI] is perfectly positioned to accelerate the downfall of the evil, corrupt organization.”
"Weinberg said: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it, you’d have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion”.
“If you want to do evil, science provides the most powerful weapons to do evil; but equally, if you want to do** good**, science puts into your hands the most powerful tools to do so.”
Exhibit B:
- “A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence.”*
“Human beings are just gene machines.”
“It could be that the world, the universe, is a totally hopeless place. I don’t, as a matter of fact, think it is…”
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Bradski
Guest
vs.
“…he [Pope Benedict XVI] is perfectly positioned to accelerate the downfall of the evil, corrupt organization.”
You’re making the same mistake that Tony does. Dawkins is referring to the Universe itself when he says it has no design, no evil, no purpose. It is entirely indifferent to us. If cease to exist or continue to do so, it makes no difference to the universe itself.
That does not mean that people individually cannot have a purpose or cannot be what a reasonable person would describe as evil.
This is not really a difficult concept and although I can certainly understand why many people would not agree with it, the fact that so many people don’t seem to understand it is beyond me.
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tonyrey
Guest
It is beyond me how you can fabricate purposes when they don’t exist! How can biological machines defy the laws of nature by controlling themselves and choosing to alter the course of events?
In a purposeless universe evil is an illusion because moral distinctions are meaningless. As Kant observed, “ought implies can” - and “can” implies the power to choose what to think and how to act unlike any mechanistic object.
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prodigalson2011
Guest
You say “The Universe Itself,” as though the universe is a distinct entity, separate from us. The problem with that, as well as Dawkins’ very poorly reasoned and even more poorly supported argument, is that we are part of the universe–what applies to the universe applies to us as well.
I’m not saying that at all. But, the fact of the matter is that whatever sense of purpose or duty an individual has, on materialism, is completely subjective and essentially delusional. Nothing one does will ultimately effect the outcome of anything. No matter what anyone does, eventually all human life and achievement will cease to exist. What happens in between now and then is essentially just a distraction.
Another problem folks like Dawkins run into when tossing about pejoratives like “evil” and
“crimes against humanity,” etc., is that there is really no good grounds for free will on materialism, either. Sure, some materialists believe in it, but in the absence of something not bound by the laws of physics it’s a pretty irrational belief, if you ask me. Point being, however, that free will is a necessary condition for evil to even exist.
I understand it perfectly well. It’s just that it’s an incredibly weak (and inherently contradictory) position to hold (as Dawkins himself admits in the second quote of “Exhibit A” of my post.)
In fact, to reframe a couple of those quotes to demonstrate his self-contradiction from another angle:
*
“…it’s very difficult to come to an absolute definition of what’s moral and what is not… There is no absolute reason why we should believe that [it]'s true.”
“A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence.”*
He has just essentially, by his own reasoning, admitted that he thinks his sense of morality is delusional.
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Bradski
Guest
I think you’ve got it. But now we’ll have to wait for Tony to tell us that in that case, it doesn’t matter if people murder, rape and run amok.
But look at it this way; some people, who nobody remembers, a few tens of thousands of years ago in a place that doesn’t even exist any more did actually murder, rape and run amok. Do you think it mattered at all to the people who were murdered and raped? Well, of course it did.
If we knew about it, would we call the acts evil and immoral? You bet we would. Would we have sympathy for those harmed? You bet we would. Would we feel that the perpetrators deserved punishment? You bet we would.
But does it matter to us now? Does it have any affect on the way anyone lives their life today? Do you lie awake worrying about it? I don’t think so. Because it did not ‘ultimately effect the outcome of anything’. The Universe went on its own sweet way and nothing really changed. All the achievments of those people killed ceased to exist.
It might seem to you too cold a fact that that is what’s going to happen to you. In a few ten thousand years (in fact a great deal earlier than that), no-one is going to remember you or what you did. You might not even have any descendants so you will have left no mark in your passing.
Some people find that too hard to accept. And those who do find it a problem, and I understand that many would, quite often turn to religion. Maybe they are right and I’m wrong. But the thing is, it seems to scare a lot of people who think that this might be all there is. But I don’t think there’s anything else and I’m not worried about it.
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Sair
Guest
Really loved this response, and I agree with almost everything here. The only part I might cavil at is that the murder, rape or other abuse of people in an unremembered place a very long time ago has no effects upon the future. To be fair, we have no way of knowing what such effects might be, so they exert no force upon our awareness or behaviour now, but chaos theory should tell us that there is seldom any activity occurring in the universe that has no effect upon subsequent events - it may be that the family line of one of the murdered individuals was wiped out when it may otherwise have had descendants - who knows? And that is the rub, of course - we don’t and almost certainly will never know.
As for the rest of your response, I agree that it can seem like a chilling thought that once we are dead, especially if we have no descendants or produce no lasting cultural artifacts, we will be irrevocably gone - not to mention the fact that the entire existence of humanity will leave no mark on the universe. But you are certainly right, I believe, that while we exist, here and now, things really do matter to us, sometimes more than we can bear. It is this simple fact of our human existence that should be our basis for caring and empathy, not the notion that our actions have some grand cosmic impact. The latter view is just arrogance in the extreme.
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tonyrey
Guest
This irrational rant is well worth ignoring since** it fails to refute a single statement I have made.**
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tonyrey
Guest
It is arrogance in the extreme to presume that “once we are dead… we will be irrevocably gone”. Can you produce conclusive evidence for this dogma? Otherwise it is unwise and harmful to proclaim your message of doom on a public forum thereby spreading gloom and despondency without any rational justification for doing so. The disciples of Dawkins have a lot to answer for…
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Peter_Plato
Guest
The logical consequence of this notion is that the basic moral truth that we should treat others as if they had value is sheer nonsense and the result of “arrogance in the extreme” because in the end each individual has no value whatsoever. The conclusion from materialism is that ethical beliefs about the value of others are delusional and in the end inconsequential.
All your pretense at having an important moral theory to offer is just flatulence at best. In fact, according to your view, a belief that humans have any value at all is simply arrogance at work. The logical consequence of your view is that we have no value whatsoever, so why should we treat others as if they do, when that merely shows arrogance, i.e., an inordinate and unwarranted view of your value projected onto others?
If human existence is inconsequential and of no inherent value, then to bolster an ethical position with this devalued currency is a sham. Why should we treat others as if they had value when in the same breath you add, but really they have none. It boils down to you stating, “I’m just saying this to be nice to you, even though you have no value because I’m a moral kind of guy. Your value comes as a result of me valuing you, but in reality you have no value in and of yourself.” Explain why you haven’t lost all credibility with your admission?
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tonyrey
Guest
A delightful reductio ad absurdum.
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prodigalson2011
Guest
Which is exactly what I’ve been saying. Those feelings are not an objective reality; they are a subjective sensation.
Of course; no one is contending that we’re not capable of extending our feelings beyond our immediate environment. Same reason people get emotional during movies, etc. But this doesn’t change the fact that these are all still no more than subjective feelings. The fact that we have them towards people who are already dead doesn’t make them any more weighty.
Indeed. And if your materialistic worldview is true, that is the truly sane response to it all. It doesn’t matter.
I’ve actually spent more of my life as an atheist than a Christian. And I will admit, though I managed to get along just fine most of the time, I did experience bouts of utter despair and anxiety over the prospect of death. But, honestly, that played no part in my conversion.
Without getting too preachy or tugging on heart strings, I’ll say that my conversion did initially arise from a very emotional situation (but not one involving potential death), but I quickly began studying the history, philosophy, theology, scientific evidence, etc. behind the faith and became convinced on an intellectual level of its truth. If that hadn’t happened, I can almost guarantee you my conversion wouldn’t have lasted any longer than a month or two and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
Anyway, it’s not that it’s too cold of a fact for me to accept. It’s that if it’s true, then one really has to concede that nothing really has any intrinsic value. Not only is beauty in the eye of the beholder, so is value and worth. By which I mean to say that the value you place on the life of someone you love is no more objectively real than the value placed on it by the serial killer who just took it from her. To you, her value was as someone to be loved and cherished, to the killer her value was as a victim and a thrill. While it will certainly arouse the anger and sorrow of any normal person, on materialism, those feelings themselves are just byproducts of biological processes and have no moral or objective value (as indicated by the word “feelings”, which are inherently subjective.)
To go back to your statement of “Would we call it immoral, etc? You bet we would.” The fact is that not everyone would. I’m sure quite a few people would think it was jolly good fun. You can’t logically ascribe moral value to actions or objects solely on the basis of the feelings they produce. This is why we contend that on materialism, morality, pervasive as it is, is essentially a delusion, however pleasant and advantageous to survival it may be.
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prodigalson2011
Guest
On your view, things matter to us insomuch and in the way that they arouse our feelings. It is the fatal flaw of materialism. The flipside of your proposition is the Holocaust. The level of care owed to others diminishes with one’s level of concern for them and can easily become the inverse as that concern turns to disdain. It is no coincidence that the movements that have produced the most death and human suffering have been materialistic.
On the other hand, on the Christian view, one’s love, caring and concern must extend even to the people one despises the most. This obligation is binding on all human beings regardless of their personal feelings of empathy.
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Portofino
Guest
The real source of misunderstanding here is the spectrum wherein one has metaphysics (or physics) on the one end, and pragmatism (and biology) on the other. Bradski and Sair are speaking from a pragmatic and experiential perspective – from life as it is lived.
Take the example of money. Drill down one level below pragmatism, and money is simply pieces of paper. Drill down another level below pragmatism, and money is merely matter in motion.
Now take that apprehension that “money is worthless” and apply it to the landlady who is expecting rent, or the bank that is foreclosing on your house. Try telling the subzero temperatures outside, that money is of delusional value, despite the fact that money is the only thing separating you and exposure to the elements. The consequences of the lack of it would be a rude awakening, and would throw one from the “theoretical” to the “pragmatic” end of the spectrum fairly quickly.
This pragmatic, experiential reality is rock solid, in terms of life as it is actually lived. It pushes back (“reality is that which pushes back” – William James).
In an important sense, this pragmatic, experiential reality is the only reality we will ever directly experience. As for the rest, we can merely think about it, ultimately. We will never have direct experience of a subatomic particle (except in a scientific laboratory, and that through inference).
The thing is, these subjective elements of life as it is experienced are hardly subjective, in the sense of arbritray. There are fundamental common denominators between: human families; human societies; the human experience. We eat edible food; we seek health and avoid sickness; we have familial bonds and experience love; we have socieities that protect our common interests, and that (in turn) demand the fuilfillment of certain obligations. We laugh and experience humor. We cry and experience pain and grief. We appreciate things we find beautiful. We build and create. Even our yearning for meaning and purpose --whether through art or religion, or moral ideals – is experiential. It may be the product of evolution or of a conscious creator-God. But, as long as we live, it is the only reality we will ever know. So long as we live, it cannot be transcended through experience.
A typical parent’s bond with its child is so strong that it doesn’t care about the fact that strangers don’t care about its child at all; nor does it normally trouble itself over the question of whether the cosmos cares about its child. This experiential reality is so strong – and so solid – that, pragmatically speaking, it is idle to theorize that it may not be real (just as it idle to theorize whether the red hot iron coming your way is “intrinsically painful”). So long as we live, it is real – as real as the fact that we breathe; that we are conscious; as real, even, as the experiential fact that we have to die.
All of this can be true, even if God exists. But the question of God’s existence or non-existence is, in comparison, a theoretical question.
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Bradski
Guest
I agree. There are consequences to any action. But if we don’t know what they are or we don’t realise that we have been affected by them, then they are meaningless in every sense. It could be that if one person in my scenario had not been killed, it may have resulted in me not existing. Should I be glad that he died? The question doesn’t appear to have any meaning.
But the twists and turns of life are endlessly fascinating. I have on occasion relived my life backwards to individual moments that seemed to have the greatest impact. And they can seem be mind-numbingly inconsequential when they occurred. Someone dropping their change and missing the next bus decades ago in London results in a whole family being brought up in Sydney.
Death and taxes, Tony. But I’ll tell you what. If you can show me some proof that we are not irrevocably gone when we are…well, irrevocably gone, then I’ll buy you dinner.
The value that people have is the emotional attachment that other people have to them. It’s a reason why some people don’t feel they have any worth if they feel that others do not value them. It’s the reason why you feel that you yourself have more worth if lots of people treat you as having value.
For some, that’s not enough and there is religion – not just Christianity, which teaches that there will always be someone to love them even if, in this life, they are alone. It’s a comfort in what can be a cold and uncaring world. The people in my scenario have literally no value – to me. But they were all husbands and wives, friends, sons and daughters. And that gave them value to those that knew them. It’s all relative.
If a person values everything equally, then he values nothing at all (something Karl Popper might have said after a few beers).
But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It’s something we individually appreciate. Or not, as the case may be. And value doesn’t represent an intrinsic worth but is something that is individually assigned by each of us. A Picasso isn’t ‘worth’ a couple of million dollars in itself. That worth is simply an amount that someone would be prepared to pay to own it. So in this case, your following comments are correct:
That’s exactly right. The fact that someone could kill my daughter shows that he would place no value on her life (and would discount the value that others placed on her). Whereas the fact that I would lay down my life for her would show she has immeasurable value to me. And the fact that I would do so for her but not for a stranger (and I’d suggest that the same would be true for you) shows without any shadow of doubt that value is relative.
When I said ‘we’ I specifically meant you and me. I realise that not everyone would call it immoral. But someone who did think it was a fun way to spend an afternoon would be in the same situation as the killer mentioned earlier. They wouldn’t value the person or the value that others assigned to them. If we understand that people give value to others, then we should apply the Golden Rule. There is a social contract to which the vast majority of us have agreed which says in essence: If I expect my daughter to be able to walk the streets safely, then I cannot attack someone else’s daughter.
Naturally, if someone thinks that there is no risk to their loved ones and there was no danger of punishment, then all bets could be off. Then we get gas chambers and mass rape and genocide.
I’d suggest that if asked, the perpetrators would admit at some point that those they were killing were valuable to others, if not themselves. But the fact that there was no danger to the people that they valued themselves and that there was no risk of punishment made it easier to carry out their ‘work’.
I might have more sympathy for that view if the those committing the atrocities were not Christians. How many turned off the gas, turned on the ovens and then went to mass? And if a solidly Christian, educated and civilised nation can produce such horrors, then there but for the grace of God go us all.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
An insightful post! However I disagree with your portrayal of the “subjective” as merely theoretical. All this “drilling down” seems to imply something like “getting to the root of” or the “substantial reality” underneath everything. That presupposes the very materialistic point of view that is under debate.
In effect, it would be the same as characterizing, via your drilling down method, the works of Shakespeare as reducible to ink and paper. The profound narratives and ideas embodied by the pigment and parchment being relegated, albeit not arbitrarily, to the secondary status of subjective illusion. Such a view presupposes that the material realm IS the primary source and foundation of reality and the transcendent ideas mere decorative embellishments.
Setting such a priority is precisely what is in question here. Is matter prime and form secondary or is form the fundamental reality and matter a mere medium?
Is the beauty of a great painting a vapid illusion and the paint and canvas substantial? Or is the beauty fundamental and the paint and canvas a mere vessel? It is precisely deciding which perspective to take that is at stake!
The moral argument, in effect, is saying that quality/form takes priority over quantity/matter, underpinning and justifying our moral intuitions. The materialist has no such ground for a moral position because people and things have no inherent value but only incidentally, and contingently, in proportion as they are valued by an existent subject.
Given a materialistic perspective, someone with low self-esteem and unloved by any other person, in effect has no value. Or in modern secular terms, a fetus that does not have the mental/emotional apparatus to value and is not valued (because not known or loved by any other) effectively has no value and can be disposed without qualms. Moral worth becomes a very tentative and provisional quality.
If a powerful group chooses to withdraw value from a subordinate group, they are devalued and, therefore, lose moral worth. Where does that lead in the absence of any objective (non-subjective) criteria for assigning worth? Do some subjects have greater say in assigning value? Does a majority constitute a morally cogent unit for rescinding worth from a minority? On what basis are the rights of unproductive or devalued individuals protected?
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Portofino
Guest
I would also say that it shows a lack of understanding on the part of the perpetrator, in the sense that what they will reap is not what they are intending to sow. Obviously, the danger of punishment is always there, so long as there are other human beings in the world.
More than this, though, I see many individuals who think somewhat in this fashion: “I want to love my friends and hate my enemies”; “I want to love my own children, and not give a damn about other people’s chilldren.”
They have an imperfect understanding of cause and effect, when they say this; they do not reap what they intended to sow. So let’s say I am kind to my friends, and cheat, exploit, and act cruelly towards strangers. That behavior becomes habitual and conditions my way of responding to others, period. So, I cheat the stranger, if the profit is lucrative enough. In doing so, I don’t realize that I would cheat my own friends and loved ones, if the profit were lucrative enough. Or, I have a hair-trigger reaction in terms of considering others enemies. Now, let’s say my own son or daughter – or best friend – wrongs me in some way. It will be much harder to love that person unconditionally, given that it is so easy for me to consider people in general as enemies. If I am unforgiving towards so many others, I can’t help but become less forgiving towards my loved ones.
Conversely, if I truly love my son or daughter unconditionally – with patience, kindness, understanding – those qualities that the love of my son or daughter helped me acquire, cannot help but rub off on the way I relate to others, period. There will be a little bit of the patience, kindness, and understanding I have for my children, in my relations with everyone I meet.
I cannot have cruelty and enmity towards the rest of the world, without that contaminating the few relationships that are dearest to me and which I intend to protect from that harsh treatment (including, possibly, my own relationship with myself).
In fairness, I would grant that failure to live up to these ideals does not mean that even the attempt to live up to these ideals, is not valuable.
What I do think is that more reasoning and persuasion (which relies on appeals to self-interest) would help, not hinder, progress in this area. Explaining to the cruel individual, for example, why abusing others is not in his best interest, nor in the interest of his relationships with the one or two people in the world he actually loves (very few human beings on earth truly care for nobody, nor even care for themselves). The Buddhists call that “inter-dependence” and it is a recognition of the web of cause-and-effect (in this case, “if you spend all day devaluing other people’s children, you will end valuing your own child that much less, in spite of yourself”).
That’s like that line from John Donne, “every man’s death diminishes me.” In a sense, that is true – anywhere that life is devalued in the world – treated as cheap – my own life becomes that much less valuable. And this is even more the case, if I am the one doing the devaluing.
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Sair
Guest
Good points, and I definitely agree that there is great fascination in contemplating the meandering roads we travel in life. Sometimes, when we take the time out to actually consider how tenuous our very existence really is, it’s at once a sobering and enlivening thought. What we do with our lives might not be even a blot on the vast history of the universe, but in fact it’s the only thing that can possibly matter to us in the here and now!
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Sair
Guest
But…living organisms are not just “any mechanistic object”, if by that you mean the kinds of relatively simple machines designed by intelligent agents such as ourselves. When you consider just the sheer numbers of neuronal interactions that occur every second in any mammalian brain, it becomes clear that there is no human-designed mechanism that even comes close to the complexities that ultimately manifest our behaviours.
Evil might be an illusion on a cosmic scale, but we do not operate on a cosmic scale. We operate very much on a temporal scale, in the here and now. If you have ever been offended or hurt by anyone, or if you have ever received the love of a person for whom you feel love in return, if you have ever experienced recognition for your efforts - these are the kinds of immediate things that motivate us, not any consciousness that we are writing our names in the book of eternity.
And who says we don’t have the power to choose how we act? Do we, at present, actually have any understanding of what that really means? A significant proportion of those who believe that physical determinism cancels out free will still believe in the existence of divine foreknowledge (currently being discussed on another thread) which, as far as I can tell, sounds the death knell to any practical concept of free will anyway.
And the plain fact of the matter is that if conscious beings, no matter how physically manifested, fabricate purpose, then those purposes do exist, at least as far as those physically manifested conscious beings are concerned. They don’t have to matter to the universe in order to matter to us! I’m not sure why this isn’t clear…
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Sair
Guest
Okay. Not sure how it is arrogant, exactly, to suppose that what I do in my life will be quite insignificant to the universe as a whole - indeed, even to most people on this very planet. I’m well aware that my actions have consequences, but I don’t invest any belief that those consequences will have any great eternal significance - and since I’m not a politician nor a significant social commentator or public figure, they probably won’t have much temporal significance after I die, beyond the circle of people who know me - and that’s quite enough for me, thanks.
Whatever that is, it’s not arrogance!
And I reject the view that I am spreading a message of doom. Why should the notion that this life is all we have be considered so depressing? Isn’t false hope the most depressing notion of all? If anything, consciousness of the temporality of our existence should energise people to make the most of what we know we have - the here and now. Does it not occur to you that you might be wasting your time hoping for an afterlife, belief in which has even less rational justification than acceptance of our mortality?
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