The atheists best argument?

[Tomdstone]

It certainly wasn’t valued by those who were burned.

But was burning at the stake valued by His Excellency Bishop Pierre Cauchon and other Roman Catholic clergy who supported it?

 

[Peter_Plato]

It’s one small step from self preservation to the emegence of societies. Which cannot survive without a sense of what we would describe as morality. They evolve together.

It’s no wondwr that evolution is a banned topic. The more you read, the more you learn, the more frequent those little ‘aha’ moments. The more times you stop, put down the book or the iPad and think: ‘So that’s why we do that…so that’s why this always happens…so that’s why we believe this or that…’.

A reasonable study of the Subject That Can’t Be Discussed and you wouldn’t need to ask such questions again.

Yes, survival does explain why rational rats might take an interest in the survival of other rats around them. I suppose if that is all your moral system aspires to, then evolution might explain how you have come to take an interest in those who might at some point in the future benefit your survival.

Unfortunately, that isn’t morality as most human beings conceive it – or, at least, conceived of it in ages past. The fact that morality appears to be degenerating as far as an increasing number of human beings are concerned from the defensible principles of years gone by to the “anything goes” relativism of today is proof that morality didn’t evolve precisely because it is devolving at this very moment from the laudable and lofty ideals of the past to a the whatever anyone decides is “good enough” relativity of today." I guess morality has succumbed to the law of entropy, if you want to insist on strictly evolutionary origins.

I mean if we can’t today explicate what makes any moral system a worthy one to follow, that surely entails that our moral skills and virtues have taken a severe downgrading,

You, yourself, had difficulty, as I recall, assenting to the basic moral principle that the convenience of one person should never be given a higher moral value than the very life of another. In fact, you declined to pursue the conversation past that point. Sounds like the moral value of life has suffered a devaluation. You might call that just part of the “evolution” of morality, but it’s difficult to see how having no reliable moral compass is an improvement over previous iterations of morality.

 

[Peter_Plato]

But it is only a small step natural progression. Before Christianity, Zoroastrianism had already created a monotheism with analogous conceptions of God. It is difficult to see Christian theology as a major departure from those ideas.

Sheer speculation on your part.

Zoroastrianism dates in recorded history from the fifth century BCE. There are “possible roots” dating back to the second millennium, but that claim is speculative. Judaism was well established well before that.

Christian theology takes a major departure from both Judaism and Zoroastrianism in the claim of Jesus to be the second Person of the Godhead incarnated.

There is no convincing proof that Zoroastrianism “created monotheism,” nor that other forms of monotheism were derived from it.

 

[Tomdstone]

Yes, survival does explain why rational rats might take an interest in the survival of other rats around them. I suppose if that is all your moral system aspires to, then evolution might explain how you have come to take an interest in those who might at some point in the future benefit your survival.

Unfortunately, that isn’t morality as most human beings conceive it – or, at least, conceived of it in ages past. The fact that morality appears to be degenerating as far as an increasing number of human beings are concerned from the defensible principles of years gone by to the “anything goes” relativism of today is proof that morality didn’t evolve precisely because it is devolving at this very moment from the laudable and lofty ideals of the past to a the whatever anyone decides is “good enough” relativity of today." I guess morality has succumbed to the law of entropy, if you want to insist on strictly evolutionary origins.

I mean if we can’t today explicate what makes any moral system a worthy one to follow, that surely entails that our moral skills and virtues have taken a severe downgrading,

You, yourself, had difficulty, as I recall, assenting to the basic moral principle that the convenience of one person should never be given a higher moral value than the very life of another. In fact, you declined to pursue the conversation past that point. Sounds like the moral value of life has suffered a devaluation. You might call that just part of the “evolution” of morality, but it’s difficult to see how having no reliable moral compass is an improvement over previous iterations of morality.

According to the following book, morality has a neurobiological basis.
Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture, and Wisdom (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)
by Darcia Narvaez (Author),

 

[Peter_Plato]

But earlier, you said that God WAS existence itself. So aren’t you the one who is simply tacking on Godlike properties to a non-divine thing (i.e. existence)?

But I thought the case we were discussing was that morality isn’t derived from some features of existence, it is inherent to existence. Therefore, I don’t understand your demand that I “show how it is derived.”

Also, now you are bringing up “intentionality[sic]” and “concern” which sound an awful lot like features of an individual. Since you did not address my earlier point about what disqualifies God from being an individual:
I’m going to have to conclude that God IS an individual, and that your objections to my attempts to “ground value or significance in existence itself” have so far consisted of demands that I answer “who is the individual who is bestowing this value?”
Therefore, your original point:
failed to correctly characterize your position. Because your demands have all centered around demanding a “bestower” for the value I claimed was inherent in existence, the distinction you should have made was not “where value was grounded” but “who is doing the bestowing.”

Look, all morality is premised on the basic idea that the way things are are not the way they ought to be. That a “better way” or “best way” of doing things can legitimately be compared to the way things are presently done. Any act can then be weighed or compared to what ought to have been done in order for improvement or benefit to occur.

Any ought, aside from subjective human desires, presumes intention, purpose and final outcomes (a teleology) towards which moral actions and virtues are aimed.

If the purpose or teleology is not inbuilt in existence itself – the inherent nature and value of things and “why” those things exist in the first place (including why there is something rather than nothing) – then there can be no legitimate oughts and no objective morality, at least, none which can underwrite the objective grounds to establish which oughts will authoritatively obligate moral agents.

If there is no inherently moral foundation in the fundamental purpose or reason for the existence of things, that means there can be no objective oughts which morally obligate human agency.

Brad may think that is just fine as far as his evolutionary theory of morality goes, but the problem is that his evolutionary theory doesn’t, then, explain morality, per se, nor why morality is imperative, authoritative and obligatory rather than pragmatic, subjective and strictly voluntary. Again, that would be fine with Brad, since his morality is pragmatic, subjective and voluntary, but clearly he is optioning a defective or, at least, inferior system of morality. The fact that he and an increasing majority of his fellow humans don’t care that it is substandard, demonstrates that morality hasn’t actually evolved, as he claims, but has devolved. Which further undermines his claim about morality being the result of evolution.

Again, he can’t even claim morality has gotten “better” using a theory of biology which simply eschews the idea of better, except in so far as survival is assured. That still doesn’t make his moral rules obligatory or authoritative, but conditional and optional. If you want to survive, then follow these rules. The problem is that his moral rules don’t even assure survival in the first place. There may be better ways to survive which involve grievously immoral behaviours, at least for some to “survive” in the way that they view survival. And Brad can provide no alternative means for determining who ought or ought not survive. That would require actual moral principles and values with objective grounds for holding them.

 

[e_c]

Any discussion of the meaning and nature of morals that doesn’t begin with a discussion about happiness is doomed. Read any of the 8,000 threads on CAF about it - they’re all the same.

Actions are about obtaining something. Morality is about actions. Morality is therefore about obtaining something. It must be more than “having done the right thing,” as this is circular. It can’t be about “survival,” since we have developed the idea of morality apart from the idea of merely continuing to breathe.

It’s about happiness… Flourishing… Becoming a serious human being… Fulfilling our purpose. This is pleasant for its own sake.

And ultimately, it brings us to our Last End, if we have been incorporated into Him through the Sacraments.

 

[Aloysium]

According to the following book, morality has a neurobiological basis.
Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture, and Wisdom (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)
by Darcia Narvaez (Author),

You may want to contemplate further on what it means that all this happening here requires an intact nervous system. This fact does not mean that this is solely brain, although it may be 100% CNS. At the same time, this is 100% Mind and 100% Spirit. In terms of what “basis” commonly means, you and perhaps the authors have got it wrong; morality is not merely a secondary, illusory phenomenon related to what is real - the brain. It has always been recognized, by everyone of every culture, that we differ in terms of capacity, and that this it is developmental determined. Children mature and are capable of reasoning at confirmation time, in ways not possible when they had their communion and when they were baptized. If one does not have an intact brain, depending on the lesion, one may not develop the competency to make complex decisions.

 

[goout]

Atheism’s best argument is contradiction. But it’s an argument based on a straw man.

God is love / yet there is suffering.
God is love / yet the OT portrays him as sanctioning and commanding murder of innocents.

Atheists take these problems and go at them in the same manner that fundamentalists tackle them: with rigid literalism.
So in regards to Catholic Christianity, atheists reject something they don’t really understand.

But in regards to fundamentalist Christianity, atheists are right, it doesn’t add up.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Any discussion of the meaning and nature of morals that doesn’t begin with a discussion about happiness is doomed. Read any of the 8,000 threads on CAF about it - they’re all the same.

Actions are about obtaining something. Morality is about actions. Morality is therefore about obtaining something. It must be more than “having done the right thing,” as this is circular. It can’t be about “survival,” since we have developed the idea of morality apart from the idea of merely continuing to breathe.

It’s about happiness… Flourishing… Becoming a serious human being… Fulfilling our purpose. This is pleasant for its own sake.

And ultimately, it brings us to our Last End, if we have been incorporated into Him through the Sacraments.

Happiness (in the Aristotelian sense of Eudaimonia; Greek: εὐδαιμονία) is what compels us to be moral, it isn’t, however, the grounds for morality. Morality, fundamentally, has to be grounded in the way things are – in the basic “function” of things (according to Aristotle) that exist vIs a vis all that exists. And that can only be derived from the true nature and purpose of things, the teleology or purpose built into each. He takes great pains to explain this in Nicomachean Ethics

 

[Strydersroom]

Atheism’s best argument is contradiction. But it’s an argument based on a straw man.

God is love / yet there is suffering.
God is love / yet the OT portrays him as sanctioning and commanding murder of innocents.

Atheists take these problems and go at them in the same manner that fundamentalists tackle them: with rigid literalism.
So in regards to Catholic Christianity, atheists reject something they don’t really understand.

But in regards to fundamentalist Christianity, atheists are right, it doesn’t add up.

I am no atheist at all in fact I hope there really is a heaven and God so I would consider myself agnostic, that I do not know what happens when we die. However, this argument is not a straw man at all in fact to put it this way : ALL kids and children believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus with all their heart and all their soul. Yet as they get older they’re told they do not exist and there is no physical scientific proof to prove that they do. Now to be honest the same could be said about in religions God. There is no scientific, physical proof. So it is all based on

 

[goout]

I am no atheist at all in fact I hope there really is a heaven and God so I would consider myself agnostic, that I do not know what happens when we die. However, this argument is not a straw man at all in fact to put it this way : ALL kids and children believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus with all their heart and all their soul. Yet as they get older they’re told they do not exist and there is no physical scientific proof to prove that they do. Now to be honest the same could be said about in religions God. There is no scientific, physical proof. So it is all based on

That’s not the straw man I’m referring to.
It is this:
Fundamentalists have a skewed view of God and scripture. Atheists latch on to it and set it up for criticism as if it were Christianity itself, without knowing the full, true sense of Christianity. That’s a straw man.

Atheists view religion and life through fundamentalist eyes.
Fundamentalists point to scripture to answer every detail of life, including the historic and scientific.
Atheists reject scripture because it can’t possibly satisfy the historic and scientific contradictions.
They are two extremes of the same mindset.

Agnosticism actually makes sense. To say you don’t know means that you are at least seeking with an open mind. You could say that we are all agnostic to one degree or another.

 

[buffalo]

God is perfect good. If anything else is perfect good they are God. (selfsame)

To be a perfect good, evil must be allowed to exist in contrast. Evil is the choice of men.

“Bad men steal, rape, ravage and plunder. Evil men may not always do these things, but they seek to destroy goodness, virtue, morality, decency, truth and honor.” Bishop Sheen

 

[buffalo]

Bishop Fulton J Sheen:Good & Evil youtube.com/watch?v=oy3yj56HXIQ

 

[Charlemagne_III]

The Dvaita Vedanta school of hinduism is monotheistic.

Arguable, but I’m too tired to argue. :yawn:

 

[Bradski]

According to the following book, morality has a neurobiological basis.
Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture, and Wisdom (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)
by Darcia Narvaez (Author),

See also The Moral Animal by Robert Wright.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Look, all morality is premised on the basic idea that the way things are are not the way they ought to be. That a “better way” or “best way” of doing things can legitimately be compared to the way things are presently done. Any act can then be weighed or compared to what ought to have been done in order for improvement or benefit to occur.

Any ought, aside from subjective human desires, presumes intention, purpose and final outcomes (a teleology) towards which moral actions and virtues are aimed.

In the first part, you appear to have abandoned the requirement for a “final analysis” since there is no need of such a thing for a difference to exist between the way things are and the way they ought to be.

However, in the second part, you may have added it back in by invoking a “final outcome” that serves to define the way things ought to be. I don’t think the “final outcomes” we’re talking about here use the same definition of “final” as before, though.

If the purpose or teleology is not inbuilt in existence itself – the inherent nature and value of things and “why” those things exist in the first place (including why there is something rather than nothing) – then there can be no legitimate oughts and no objective morality, at least, none which can underwrite the objective grounds to establish which oughts will authoritatively obligate moral agents.

If there is no inherently moral foundation in the fundamental purpose or reason for the existence of things, that means there can be no objective oughts which morally obligate human agency.

Perhaps my failure to understand your argument is because I don’t understand what distinguishes “legitimate oughts” from “illegitimate oughts.” If you can explain this, I will respond then.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

But was burning at the stake valued by His Excellency Bishop Pierre Cauchon and other Roman Catholic clergy who supported it?

No doubt it was valued, but the bishop is not the Church.

Nor, finally, was Judas an apostle though Jesus offered him the job.

 

[Tomdstone]

No doubt it was valued, but the bishop is not the Church.

Nor, finally, was Judas an apostle though Jesus offered him the job.

Do you believe that burning a heretic at the stake is against the will of God?
If you do, you should read the papal encyclical Exsurge Domine.
How would you say that Judas enters into the discussion when reading this encyclical?

 

[Peter_Plato]

In the first part, you appear to have abandoned the requirement for a “final analysis” since there is no need of such a thing for a difference to exist between the way things are and the way they ought to be.

However, in the second part, you may have added it back in by invoking a “final outcome” that serves to define the way things ought to be. I don’t think the “final outcomes” we’re talking about here use the same definition of “final” as before, though.

The difference would be between time and eternity. The present moment is a window into eternity. Neither the past nor future exist in any sense of the word. Only the present exists and the eternal present is the “final,” completely fulfilled reality.

Within temporal reality we are in transition between potentiality and actuality. The Eternality of God is ultimate reality, the “final analysis” which exists fully in the Eternal Now. It is the “ought to be” towards which we move – the final cause, in Aristotle’s terms which determines the real nature of all that is – which makes it the First and Uncaused Cause of all reality. This is why our temporal reality seems so illusory, it is illusory in light of the absolute which breaks through into temporal existence. The Word is the light that enlightens all men.

Perhaps my failure to understand your argument is because I don’t understand what distinguishes “legitimate oughts” from “illegitimate oughts.” If you can explain this, I will respond then.

Oughts would be legitimate if they bring us closer to the way things are supposed to be, eternally and absolutely speaking. Illegitimate if they do not.

The key here is to understand that the way things ought to be does not refer to the natural order which is passing away and is only temporary by design, but to the nature of transcendent beings and things which have an eternal destiny. Humans are autonomous in the sense that we have the potential to exist a se, in our own right. This is why we are moral agents with the capacity for initiating novel causal sequences, i.e., have free will. It is with respect to that capacity that legitimate oughts are distinguishable from illegitimate oughts. Our perfection is to be found in the freedom which is God, Ipsum Esse Subsistens. The capacity to be forged by and through the very nature of the omnipotent and omniscient omnibenevolence of God.

It isn’t that we become less free or autonomous by being formed by God, we become far MORE free and autonomous because God is unconstrained by anything whatsoever, whereas we, as “self-reliant” are absolutely slavish in comparison. In ourselves, we are nothing and to rely on that nothing to give us our reality is a fool’s quest. Recognizing that nothing as nothing, however, is the first step towards true freedom in God. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Eternity, the “final analysis,” is where we find our ultimate freedom and Summum Bonum, but that can only come about by our forging our freedom, (the legitimate ought, as opposed to the way things are in the transience of space-time,) in and through aligning our wills with the ultimate and absolute autonomy of God, who is unconstrained and absolutely free because he exists a se, in the pure and absolute sense – the Pure Act of Being Itself.

Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:34-6)

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Sheer speculation on your part.
Zoroastrianism dates in recorded history from the fifth century BCE. There are “possible roots” dating back to the second millennium, but that claim is speculative. Judaism was well established well before that.
Christian theology takes a major departure from both Judaism and Zoroastrianism in the claim of Jesus to be the second Person of the Godhead incarnated.
There is no convincing proof that Zoroastrianism “created monotheism,” nor that other forms of monotheism were derived from it.

I wasn’t saying any of those things. I was saying that Christianity has no features that satisfy:

A revelation that would vanquish the “absence” argument would need to (at the very least) be trivially distinguishable from all the other ancient mythologizing.

Where “distinguish” here is meant in an epistemic sense. The claims should be much more obviously true than those of primitive mythologizing.

You’re right, I meant distinguishing which of them is valid. That we don’t have a good epistemic method for choosing one revelation over another.

I was pointing out that the ideas in Christianity do not look dramatically more reliable than other ancient mythologies. There were other monotheistic religions with creator-gods. There were other religions that predicted divine messiahs. There were other religions whose one God had multiple personalities. There were other religions with heaven, hell, and individual judgements. There were other religions with sons of gods and resurrections.

And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.