The central contradiction running through the arguments of many of those new atheists authors

[AntiTheist]

The question we’ve been raising about value judgments is a normative one. Through reasoned analysis we are capable of changing our values. We all ask the question, “what is the right thing to do.”

A moral skeptic says, “there is no objective right or wrong. There is no good or bad.” Thus, a moral skeptic says of religion, “I don’t believe in religion, but there is nothing wrong with it, because there is no good or bad in anything.”

I’m a moral skeptic, and I think I should point out an important point that you’re overlooking.

I don’t believe in objective right or wrong, but I do still evaluate things according to my values. It’s not “objectively bad” to believe in god, but it is 1) holding a belief not in accord with reality and 2) holding a belief that can potentially lead to actions that are deemed bad according to my values (and the values of many others in my society).

But my objection to the belief in god isn’t that it’s “bad” – which would require an appeal to my values – but rather my objection to the belief in god is that it is not demonstrably true – which requires an appeal to evidence.

Hitchens, Dawkins, ThomasToo, and many other atheists are not moral skeptics. In addition to their moral/value judgment about religion, they occasionally make objective moral/value assertions. Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I have read these statements to be statements of objective truth in the opinion of the author.

You’d have to ask the individual author.

To moral skeptics, I say, I wonder if you are really a moral skeptic if you have been engaged in moral/value discussions in this thread, else you are taking great delight in playing with us.

I’ll repeat what I’ve been saying: if you have a number of broad values shared in common – like the value that we all place on an orderly society – you can generate a more or less objective set of rules in the context of those values (nothing supernatural required)

 

[Mr_Sun]

All I can say is “wow”

Never in a million years will I be able to put these things together like you guys on this forum have done.

It took a while to realize what you were saying but thats basically what I believe atheists dont really “see” or wont admit to it because nobody likes it when they are wrong.

This is what I want to say, but I am just not intelligent enough to say it.

 

[Slowlearner]

Have you ever read Kant? He provides a purely rational defense of his moral schema in Grounding For the Metaphysics of Morals.

Kant brilliantly provides a moral schema that works and is consistent, if you put your faith in the Categorical Imperative.

Couldn’t one use the Kantian system and come up with a set of rules that is pretty much what the Catholic Church teaches?

Regarding prostitution, which you consider to be a victimless crime, do you have an opinion as to it’s morality? Where legal and regulated, do you think most prostitutes and their customers are engaging in conduct that is good for their personal well-being and happiness?

 

[ThomasToo]

Kant brilliantly provides a moral schema that works and is consistent, if you put your faith in the Categorical Imperative.

Couldn’t one use the Kantian system and come up with a set of rules that is pretty much what the Catholic Church teaches?

Regarding prostitution, which you consider to be a victimless crime, do you have an opinion as to it’s morality? Where legal and regulated, do you think most prostitutes and their customers are engaging in conduct that is good for their personal well-being and happiness?

I suppose you could say that regarding faith but I think that we would then say the same of faith in the law of gravity and in the principle of object permanence. Hardly the same sort of faith claims as gods, souls and heavens.

I don’t think you can, at least without a fair amount of theological and anthropological assumptions.

I can’t see how it is immoral to sell something that one can give away for free without moral issue (barring cases of adultery, rape, incest &c). Having not interviewed prostitutes or their clientele I have no idea if they’re personal well-being or happiness is improved though I am willing to argue that both are improved over countries where prostitutes are beaten by their pimps and have no safe legal recourse.

Further, I don’t think the point of laws is to prohibit people from doing things that impede their personal well-being or happiness. Under that rubric getting drunk could very well be made illegal as well as many other things. AntiTheist and I could argue that religion decreases a person’s well-being–I don’t want to make this argument but want to assume it for this example–and under this principle of legislation could ban the expression and practice of religion. I think laws exist to protect us from one another not from ourselves.

 

[UnworthyApostle]

“I suppose you could say that regarding faith but I think that we would then say the same of faith in the law of gravity and in the principle of object permanence.”

                                                    vs.

“Kant brilliantly provides a moral schema that works and is consistent, if you put your faith in the Categorical Imperative.”

There is a false analogy drawn between gravity and the pricniple of object pemanance with the Categorical Imperative. The inmperative is a philosophy, a work of thought, therefore; an abstract opinon of a man.

Gravity and the principle are objects which have concrete and physical effects.

One can say that the Categorical Imperative has physical effects if people abide by its principles, however; the process to form those principles comes from the intellect and is an abstract process.

Gravity and the principle of object permanance are part of the natural realm and are self evident within nature. therefore; they are not abstract ideas but concrete phenomenon.

 

[ThomasToo]

“I suppose you could say that regarding faith but I think that we would then say the same of faith in the law of gravity and in the principle of object permanence.”

                                                    vs.

“Kant brilliantly provides a moral schema that works and is consistent, if you put your faith in the Categorical Imperative.”

There is a false analogy drawn between gravity and the pricniple of object pemanance with the Categorical Imperative. The inmperative is a philosophy, a work of thought, therefore; an abstract opinon of a man.

Gravity and the principle are objects which have concrete and physical effects.

One can say that the Categorical Imperative has physical effects if people abide by its principles, however; the process to form those principles comes from the intellect and is an abstract process.

Gravity and the principle of object permanance are part of the natural realm and are self evident within nature. therefore; they are not abstract ideas but concrete phenomenon.

I think gravity and object permanence are rooted in concrete (i.e. physical) phenomena but by virtue of being ideas and not things are inherently abstract. We cannot reach out and touch either one of them any more than we can the categorical imperative.

 

[UnworthyApostle]

“We cannot reach out and touch either one of them any more than we can the categorical imperative.”

I can definitely know gravity and the object of permenance naturally alone.

If I jump from the top of a building, something pulls me down to the earth.

I store a memory within my mind which makes a permenant conception of an object once it has been taken away.

Both of these are visible in nature, and are known to all. Whether they can formulate a semantical expression of the phenomenon does not matter.

The question as to whether prostitution is wrong is much more speculative than the law that states what goes up must come down.

 

[ThomasToo]

“We cannot reach out and touch either one of them any more than we can the categorical imperative.”

I can definitely know gravity and the object of permenance naturally alone.

If I jump from the top of a building, something pulls me down to the earth.

I store a memory within my mind which makes a permenant conception of an object once it has been taken away.

Both of these are visible in nature, and are known to all. Whether they can formulate a semantical expression of the phenomenon does not matter.

The question as to whether prostitution is wrong is much more speculative than the law that states what goes up must come down.

But all your experience tells you is terrestrial gravity. There is nothing in either of our experience to imply the law of universal gravitation or this force is proportional to the masses involved and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers of masses.

Or how about the very existence of the physical universe? Have you read Descartes? All our experience could be faulty.

 

[DanteAlighieri]

Ok. We have a problem with terminology.

I define belief as “the acceptance of a claim as true.”

That acceptance can rely on evidence or it can rely on faith, but it cannot rely on both, in the way that I define them.

Evidence-based belief is “the acceptance of a claim as true on the basis of sufficient evidence that can be presented to another person and – on the weight of that evidence alone – convince virtually any reasonable person.” We can quibble over how good the evidence is, what we accept as evidence, etc. But for the most part, virtually any reasonable person would be convinced by the evidence.

There is no faith involved in evidence-based belief. Obviously, we trust the evidence and the ability of our own reason to derive true conclusions from it – but this trust is itself based on good evidence (our experience of our past good judgments and the general reliability of evidence in the past). “Faith,” as I’m about to define it, is not necessary.

I define faith-based belief as “the acceptance of a claim as true without sufficient evidence.”

Under my definitions, you cannot have it both ways. Either you have sufficient evidence for a claim – in which case, faith is not necessary – or you have insufficient evidence for a claim – in which case, discussion becomes completely and totally pointless.

I have to go now, and I will not have time to reply until much later today.

But that’s not what faith is. Faith is an act of will to assent to teachings that are based not on wild, unprovable claims, but on testimony of other believers and the Tradition of the Church. It is not merely blind acceptance of things we cannot prove.

I’m afraid I must leave it at that. I have both overstepped my expertise and run into time crunches that make it impossible for me to keep up with this thread. I appreciate your respectfulness. Please believe me when I say that I mean this in the spirit of goodwill and charity – I will keep you in my prayers. I hope to communicate with you again sometime.

Peace,
Dante

 

[ManOnFire]

There’s also the following forumlae for m_L longitudinal mass and m_T transverse mass as functions of rest mass, m_0, and velocity, v–for velocities near the speed of light:
/gamma = /frac{1}{/root(1-/frac{v^2}{c^2})}
m_L = (/gamma^3)(m_0)
m_T = (/gamma)(m_0)

This is LaTeX notation because I don’t know of an easy way to explain it here but the essay version follows. Basically as velocity approaches the speed of light (v approaches c) then the bottom part of the fraction in gamma–the constant by which our rest mass to get our relativistic masses–approaches zero. For the case v = c we have gamma = 1/0 which is obviously impossible. As such as the velocity of an object with non-zero mass approaches the speed of light, it’s mass increases geometrically and approaches infinity as v approaches c. So too it takes a geometrically increasing amount of energy to accelerate an object until there is simply not enough energy in the known universe to push it any measurable amount faster.

Did that make sense to anyone?

Your complex terms refer to intermediate science and fail to prove anything regarding the infinity of time and space. Your complex terms are designed to intimidate anyone who disagrees with you.

Any calculation is based on something you can measure. Infinity does not fit into any FINITE calculation. You’ve simply awarded yourself an answer that your ego will accept. It sounds like you have conveniently and free willingly closed your mind once you have found an answer that doesn’t make you uncomfortable instead of continuing to search for the Truth. Any REAL scientist or philosopher who places Truth above ego will not accept your answer. THAT"S the inconvenient Truth.

I was taught that faster-than-the-speed of light is the theoretically possible. It’s the only way to travel backward in time. The theory of faster-than-the-speed-of-light is the basis for all those sci-fi movie scenarios. But I’m probably a few years older than you, so maybe you could direct a link to the technology that says it’s not possible.

A black hole does not allow light to escape, so how is it’s force not equal or greater than the speed of light?

Outside of the above arguments is still the issue of the beginning of time. Time is relative to the speed of light. You claim that an object or the entire universe equalling the speed of light is not possible. Therefore, in a godless scenario of the beginning of time, “everything in the entire universe” had to be moving equal to the speed of light while Time was “waiting to begin.” As Newton stated, an object at rest remains at rest until acted upon by an outside force. If time were standing still, waiting to begin, then “something” had to nudge time off it’s equal of the speed of light to get it to begin. That “something” must then exist INFINITESIMALLY (or be God). If you claim that a godless “something” existed infinitesimally to get time to begin, then Actual Infinity exists. If Actual Infinty exists, then science is inherently and permanently impotent to know the Truth. If this is the case, why would anyone have such blind faith in science?

 

[Slowlearner]

I’m a moral skeptic, and I think I should point out an important point that you’re overlooking.

 

[Slowlearner]

I’m a moral skeptic, and I think I should point out an important point that you’re overlooking.

 

[AntiTheist]

But that’s not what faith is. Faith is an act of will to assent to teachings that are based not on wild, unprovable claims, but on testimony of other believers and the Tradition of the Church. It is not merely blind acceptance of things we cannot prove.

I’ve already explained that testimony of other believers and holy texts is not sufficient to accept extraordinary claims – any more than the far more recent testimony of alien abductees is sufficient to accept the extraordinary claim of alien abduction (and NOTE that I am comparing standards of evidence in each case; I am not comparing your god to aliens).

Faith is the acceptance of claims for which there is insufficient evidence – if you had sufficient evidence for your claims, you wouldn’t need to appeal to faith.

Please believe me when I say that I mean this in the spirit of goodwill and charity – I will keep you in my prayers.

I know you mean well, but the sentiment is still quite distasteful to me. I don’t mean offense when I say this, but really, if you must incorporate me into your fantasy life, please keep it to yourself.

I too appreciate the tone of our conversation, and I look forward to talking to you again sometime.

 

[tonyrey]

Faith is the acceptance of claims for which there is insufficient evidence – if you had sufficient evidence for your claims, you wouldn’t need to appeal to faith.

You obviously have faith in “evidence”. How do you determine what is evidence?

 

[ThomasToo]

Your complex terms refer to intermediate science and fail to prove anything regarding the infinity of time and space. Your complex terms are designed to intimidate anyone who disagrees with you.

Any calculation is based on something you can measure. Infinity does not fit into any FINITE calculation. You’ve simply awarded yourself an answer that your ego will accept. It sounds like you have conveniently and free willingly closed your mind once you have found an answer that doesn’t make you uncomfortable instead of continuing to search for the Truth. Any REAL scientist or philosopher who places Truth above ego will not accept your answer. THAT"S the inconvenient Truth.

Hones question without judgment, irony or spite: do you have any advanced (i.e. beyond high school) training in the sciences? I wasn’t trying to smash you down, I was trying to show why it is impossible for any physical entity (i.e. an entity with mass) to move faster than the speed of light or at that speed.

I was taught that faster-than-the-speed of light is the theoretically possible. It’s the only way to travel backward in time. The theory of faster-than-the-speed-of-light is the basis for all those sci-fi movie scenarios. But I’m probably a few years older than you, so maybe you could direct a link to the technology that says it’s not possible.

I say this with all due respect to your teachers, you were taught wrong. The rejection of proper science is the basis for those movies (possibly barring Star Trek’s notion of creating a warp bubble but that has other issues). No technology says faster than light travel is impossible but the equations I cited above show how as a body approaches the speed of light its mass increases until there’s not enough energy to accelerate it any more.

A black hole does not allow light to escape, so how is it’s force not equal or greater than the speed of light?

Different units: force is measured in Newtons (kilogram*meters/seconds^2) and the speed of light is measure in meters per second. Frankly your question doesn’t make sense in light of that fact. It’s like asking how can this bowling ball weigh less than 25 miles per hour?

Outside of the above arguments is still the issue of the beginning of time. Time is relative to the speed of light. You claim that an object or the entire universe equalling the speed of light is not possible. Therefore, in a godless scenario of the beginning of time, “everything in the entire universe” had to be moving equal to the speed of light while Time was “waiting to begin.” As Newton stated, an object at rest remains at rest until acted upon by an outside force. If time were standing still, waiting to begin, then “something” had to nudge time off it’s equal of the speed of light to get it to begin. That “something” must then exist INFINITESIMALLY (or be God). If you claim that a godless “something” existed infinitesimally to get time to begin, then Actual Infinity exists. If Actual Infinty exists, then science is inherently and permanently impotent to know the Truth. If this is the case, why would anyone have such blind faith in science?

This is the argument from the first cause (based on the notion that there cannot be an infinitely predicated chain of efficient causality) but it stands wanting. You are in effect saying “(1) everything needs a cause, hence (2) the universe needs a cause so let’s (3) call that cause God.” Other issues–such as the conflation of a deist first cause and the Judeo-Christian God–aside there’s still the issue that the argument is being applied unequally and the question ‘what caused God?’ is never asked and when it is the answer is some form of ‘nothing, God has always existed.’ If such a supposition is licit then it is unparsimonious to invoke God to explain the genesis of the universe and not simply use that explanation for the universe itself.

 

[tonyrey]

This is the argument from the first cause (based on the notion that there cannot be an infinitely predicated chain of efficient causality) but it stands wanting. You are in effect saying “(1) everything needs a cause, hence (2) the universe needs a cause so let’s (3) call that cause God.” Other issues–such as the conflation of a deist first cause and the Judeo-Christian God–aside there’s still the issue that the argument is being applied unequally and the question ‘what caused God?’ is never asked and when it is the answer is some form of ‘nothing, God has always existed.’ If such a supposition is licit then it is unparsimonious to invoke God to explain the genesis of the universe and not simply use that explanation for the universe itself.

To regard the universe both as eternal and as the genesis of itself is certainly a supposition which is parsimonious but it is both unscientific and unreasonable. It amounts to a deification of matter!

 

[ThomasToo]

To regard the universe both as eternal and as the genesis of itself is certainly a supposition which is parsimonious but it is both unscientific and unreasonable. It amounts to a deification of matter!

I never said it was scientific; we’re doing metaphysics. I do not, however, think it is any more unreasonable than to create–insofar as using for an explanation–an uncreated deity to explain the universe.

 

[Slowlearner]

I suppose you could say that regarding faith but I think that we would then say the same of faith in the law of gravity and in the principle of object permanence. Hardly the same sort of faith claims as gods, souls and heavens.

I don’t think you can, at least without a fair amount of theological and anthropological assumptions.

I can’t see how it is immoral to sell something that one can give away for free without moral issue (barring cases of adultery, rape, incest &c). Having not interviewed prostitutes or their clientele I have no idea if they’re personal well-being or happiness is improved though I am willing to argue that both are improved over countries where prostitutes are beaten by their pimps and have no safe legal recourse.

Further, I don’t think the point of laws is to prohibit people from doing things that impede their personal well-being or happiness. Under that rubric getting drunk could very well be made illegal as well as many other things. AntiTheist and I could argue that religion decreases a person’s well-being–I don’t want to make this argument but want to assume it for this example–and under this principle of legislation could ban the expression and practice of religion. I think laws exist to protect us from one another not from ourselves.

Your thoughts would not be very helpful to a 16 year old run away, who is faced with real decisions about what to do. What do you say if she asks you, “l’ve got this guy who will pimp me out, he’s a bit gruff at times, but I hate my parents, they are too strict, I don’t want to go home, and this guy will give me a place to live and money and drugs, I think I’ll be happy, should I go for it?”

I don’t think you should answer that question until you have interviewed a prostitute or prostitute customer, or otherwise get more information. You would get an interesting view if your local area happened to have a Catholic charity prostitution recovery group.

Moral and ethical discussions are not abstract. People are faced with these things daily. At a minimum, each of us are faced daily with the question, “do people around me need help? and should I help them?”

In over two hundred years since Kant’s writings, has anyone, or any group, published a “moral guide to life” based on his framework? If not, how has his thinking helped anyone?

The Catholic church has a moral guideline for life. When I was twenty, I thought it was dumb and restrictive and no way would I be Catholic. I’m 40+ now and believe the Catholic moral rules are objectively wise for humans and will lead to happy, healthy life by those that endeavor to follow them. I wish I had been smart enough to follow them earlier.

 

[ThomasToo]

Your thoughts would not be very helpful to a 16 year old run away, who is faced with real decisions about what to do. What do you say if she asks you, “l’ve got this guy who will pimp me out, he’s a bit gruff at times, but I hate my parents, they are too strict, I don’t want to go home, and this guy will give me a place to live and money and drugs, I think I’ll be happy, should I go for it?”

Let’s set aside the fact that unless this person is emancipated, the age of consent is typically 18. I’d say that pimps are almost always dangerous, abusive and misogynistic. If she were out of prison at the time I’d have her call my cousin who’s walked that road. Frankly I’m not a 16 year old run away so I don’t try to have thoughts that would help one. I’m an academic so I think of moral issues in an academic way.

I don’t think you should answer that question until you have interviewed a prostitute or prostitute customer, or otherwise get more information. You would get an interesting view if your local area happened to have a Catholic charity prostitution recovery group.

I didn’t answer that question since I said I haven’t interviewed them. As I said, however, my point isn’t about consequences but about liberty. Even if every person who has every prostituted him- or herself and every person who ever solicited a prostitute regretted the experience I don’t think it is the law’s job to keep us from making decisions that will make us unhappy.

Moral and ethical discussions are not abstract. People are faced with these things daily. At a minimum, each of us are faced daily with the question, “do people around me need help? and should I help them?”

I think moral/ethical discussions are fundamentally abstract and play out in practical circumstances. An easy parallel would be maths; mathematics is fundamentally an abstract field of study but people are also faced with mathematical things daily.

In over two hundred years since Kant’s writings, has anyone, or any group, published a “moral guide to life” based on his framework? If not, how has his thinking helped anyone?

I don’t think the rubric under which to judge a school of thought is whether it has helped people. That said, Kant wrote the moral guide to life based on the framework. I don’t think we need a book based on another book for his thinking to have had a positive impact; all that’s needed are individuals who base their moral principles in Kant’s deontological ethics.

The Catholic church has a moral guideline for life. When I was twenty, I thought it was dumb and restrictive and no way would I be Catholic. I’m 40+ now and believe the Catholic moral rules are objectively wise for humans and will lead to happy, healthy life by those that endeavor to follow them. I wish I had been smart enough to follow them earlier.

I disagree with the metaphysical, epistemological and anthropological underpinnings of the Church’s moral norms so I’m far beyond 'dumb and ‘restrictive’ though I think they can be those too but that’s a different issue.

 

[tonyrey]

I never said it was scientific; we’re doing metaphysics. I do not, however, think it is any more unreasonable than to create–insofar as using for an explanation–an uncreated deity to explain the universe.

Since you believe everything is ultimately physical everything should ultimately have a physical explanation. Many physicalists reject metaphysics.

A Supreme Mind is a more adequate explanation than the universe because it is not restricted in time and space or subject to physical laws. Minds are also associated with rationality, creativity, consciousness, free will, responsibility and purposeful activity, all of which are lacking in atomic particles.