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Author | Topic: Morality and Subjectivity | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
The problem with basing universal principles on 'discovering what humanity already considers to be moral and immoral' is that it assumes that humanity is always correct in determining what is moral and what is immoral. As you go on to note, I certainly don't believe that, as I've acknowledged over and over that this may in fact not be possible BECAUSE there is so much difference in morality from culture to culture. Nevertheless, I'm still up for considering that IF we could show that there is a moral trend running through all cultures in all times, so that if it's carefully enough defined it's virtually universal, then we could start talking in terms of an absolute. Maybe. I'm not totally convinced even about that. Your story about the headhunters shows again the difficulty with this project, as has been acknowledged. I also pointed out somewhere at EvC that one of the Northern European tribes -- I forget if it was Goths or Scandinavians, but I sort of think it was the Vikings -- rejected Christianity because they considered it to be immoral to forgive an enemy, and believed that Christianity was only going to corrupt the morals of their youth -- their highest morality being vengeance and successful war campaigns against other tribes. They held out against Christianity up to around 1000 AD as I recall. I'll have to look that up again. That's, again, a typical example of why it would be hard to find a universal absolute moral principle by looking at all cultures in all times. But I don't see how the principles of any moral philosophy are going to solve it either. Maybe we could consider that a third possible way an absolute might be established I suppose, but I'm still contemplating this second way, of finding a universally practiced moral principle.
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
In the ongoing quest to figure out if God exists or not, one (or at least I) have for many years thought that what might be called the "moral argument" against God was definitive. Unfortunately, I think it might be flawed.
Here's my "reasoning": I thought earlier that the belief in evolution entailed a disbelief in God. The Christian explanation for the presence of evil in the world is the concept of the Fall. According to this view, mankind fell when he sinned and nature fell with him. What had been nice became vicious and arbitrary. Suffering rained down on all. Now the evolution and the Fall do not fit together. If one says that evolution occurred before the Fall, what are we to do withthose eons of suffering on the part of animals? One might claim that (a)animals don’t (or perhaps didn't) feel pain or (b)that even if animals do feel pain, animal pain doesn’t matter. In order to feel physical pain one must have a developed nervous system. Let’s keep in mind that man came very late in the evolutionary process. We are distant cousins to the cat. Cats and ourselves are both Eutherians. We split up around a 100 million years ago. So there is this extremely old ancestor of the modern cat that had many millions of years to develop a nervous system equal to the modern cat. There can be little doubt, I suppose, that many animals had nervous systems capable of causing them to feel pain long before the emergence of man--that is, long before the purported Fall. What are we to do with all this pre-Fall animal pain? To say that animal pain doesn’t matter doesn’t seem right. Pain is pain, no matter who or what feels it--an animal, an alien fromouter space, or a human being. The animals are innocent presumably. It’s not their fault that they evolved to feed on one another and fight with each other. Who is responsible for this animal pain? The obvious answer is God. God is cruel. But to say that God is cruel is another way of saying that God does not exist. At any rate, that’s what people generally mean when they say that. This is the moral argument against the existence of God. But there’s a flaw here, I think. If God does not exist, then our morality is subjective, by which I mean it’s just something we made up. There’s no logical basis for it. However we try to justifysome moral rule, the justification itself is a veil for yet another moral rule for which there is no valid justification. If I say, “Thou shalt not murder,” and somebody says, “Why not?”--what is my response? Because you would not want someone to murder you? The Golden Rule? The response can be, “Well, I feel perfectly safe; I don’t think anyone is going to murder me. So why not do it if I can profit from it?” What are we to say? Can we say, if everybody felt that way, civilization would collapse? The response can be that obviously everyone does not feel that way, and anyway, why should we care if civilization collapses or not? Why shouldn’t we concentrate only on what is of immediate value to the Self--not the long term self but the short-term self? Ultimately, the only reply can be, “Because it’s not right.” We might as well have just stuck with the moral rule, “Thou shalt not murder.” We haven’t advanced the argument at all. But if our morality is subjective, then our moral judgments are subjective also. One moral judgment we might make is that God is cruel, based on the fact that animals suffered before thispurported Fall. But this is just a subjective judgment on our part since our morality overall is subjective. The moral argument against God fails due to the fact that we have no objective evidence of His cruelty. We only have our subjective feelings, which don’t count as evidence. I might as well claim that because I prefer red to blue, that red is objectively superior to blue or that because I went to a certain school, and have a liking for that school, that this proves that school is superior to other schools. Our morality might very well be a bias. We can only judge God’s morality if he exists, not if he doesn’t exist. If God exists, he’s cruel (assuming the truth of evolution). But we can’t prove he doesn’t exist by claiming he’s cruel. Nonetheless, that is the main argument offered against the existence of God--that if He did exist, he would be cruel. Any responses to this admittedly lengthy explanation would be appreciated.
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iano Member (Idle past 1971 days) Posts: 6165 From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland. Joined: |
Unfortunately, I think it might be flawed. You had an argument against the existance of God and you find it flawed and you find that you finding it flawed is 'unfortunate'? I would have thought that finding one less reason to support Gods non-existance would prove a delight to you. Its almost like you didn't want him to exist. I enjoyed the piece. You might consider where this point might influence how the logic sits together. If God exists it means that there exists such a thing as absolute morals. But it doesn't follow that we are in possession of them. They can exist and we can still have subjective morals. Not totally divorced from the abolute but still subjective in that we can decide which to accept and whether to spanner on their absolutedness. The fall would suggest this is what happened us. The discussion on gay marriage would prove our morals are subjective. He can exist and it is our subjective morality which decides he is cruel. Whereas he would define what is cruel and what isn't.
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
I would have thought that finding one less reason to support Gods non-existance would prove a delight to you. Its almost like you didn't want him to exist. It's not that I don't want Him to exist. I was looking for certainty, one way or the other.
They can exist and we can still have subjective morals. If our morals are subjective, then the concept of sin is meaningless. [personal note to Faith: all e-mails to you are returned "user unknown"]. Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
Firstly, I don't know why you keep phrasing your argument as one of evolution's compatibility with Christiaity when evolution per se has no real relevance to the argumetn. Even appealing to YEC views (because OEC views have the smae poblems) only solves part of the problem - and creates many more.
(As an aside the IDist William Dembski has recently published a theodicy which attempts to deal with the very problem of animal pain prior to human existence. If he could rationally get rid of the problem by rejecting evolution even more firmly than he already does I am sure that he would love to do so).
quote:It is a way of saying that the Christian God does not exist because the Christian God is not cruel. It is not an argument agaisnt a more generic "God" wo migh be cruel. quote:You don't have to go into the question of whether morality can be objective without God to establish this. It is trivial that if God does not exist then God cannot in reality be moral or immoral. Logically it is not a problem if the argument only works if God exists. We may trivially save the argument by adding "God exists" as a premise. (e.g. "If God exists, then He is cruel" does not require us to assume that we can make moral objective judgements in the case that God does not exist). Thus this point is not a significant flaw in the argument.
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iano Member (Idle past 1971 days) Posts: 6165 From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland. Joined: |
It's not that I don't want Him to exist. I was looking for certainty, one way or the other. The route you are travelling at the moment is a search for intellectual certainty one way or the other. And as far as it goes it may bring one close. But it cannot arrive on its own. It can say that intellectually God can exist but never that he does exist. I don't know how a person can every be sure he doesn't exist. But I know that the only way they can be sure he does is if they meet him themselves. Thereafter there is no possibility of an argument or a philosophy or a scientific discovery altering the intellectual knowledge that he does exist.
If our morals are subjective, then the concept of sin is meaningless. Not necessarily. God inserted a perfect set of morals in to us all and we choose to distort them and operate according to a distorted model of our own making. The altering of his morals in a sin (we chose to do so). And every action according to our spannered on morals naturally sinful too. That each can spanner on them in their own way leads to subjective morals (self-spannered upon)
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
[personal note to Faith: all e-mails to you are returned "user unknown"].
Problem should now be cleared. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
I was looking for certainty, one way or the other.
Become a mathematician. In mathematics you can have certainty. In real life, you cannot.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
Heh. That's what I like about mathematics. I like knowing for certain whether I am right or wrong.
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." -- H. L. Mencken (quoted on Panda's Thumb)
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
If our morals are subjective, then the concept of sin is meaningless.
Not necessarily. God inserted a perfect set of morals in to us all and we choose to distort them and operate according to a distorted model of our own making. The altering of his morals in a sin (we chose to do so). And every action according to our spannered on morals naturally sinful too. That each can spanner on them in their own way leads to subjective morals (self-spannered upon) I think what he meant to say is that if morals are in FACT subjective, if that's all they are, we just make them up as we go, and all humanity always has, then the concept of sin is meaningless. Which is true because sin is an absolute concept, given by God and can't be anything else. You and I know that there is an absolute moral law but this is what RR isn't convinced of yet. I appreciate your point that although we know there is an absolute moral law that doesn't mean any of us recognize much of it in ourselves. That's why it had to be revealed, and that's how you and I know there is this law, because we believe the revelation of it.
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jmrozi1 Member (Idle past 5923 days) Posts: 79 From: Maryland Joined: |
This could be one of the few times I've actually agreed with iano's conclusions. My reasons are slightly different though:
It's not that I don't want Him to exist. I was looking for certainty, one way or the other.
Certainty about anything, especially the existence of God, is impossible. Ironically, that statement is a contradiction, but hopefully you can see my point. Any true scientist will tell you that there is no such thing as a scientific fact; there are only theories. Short of God himself granting you the power of logical perfection, you are left only with the option to favor one side over the other.
If our morals are subjective, then the concept of sin is meaningless.
I believe that morality can be based on a purely objective and logical front, but even if it can't your conclusion doesn't follow from your hypothesis - that is unless you are arguing that opinions and beliefs are completely random and have absolutely no observational support. To clarify my point, purely subjective thoughts are an attempt to explain reality purely through logic. Purely objective thoughts are an attempt to assume nothing and explain patterns through observation and probability. Hopefully, you don't take these definitions too literally, but I want you to realize to points I'm trying to make:(1) Almost all thought is a middle ground between these two extremes; maybe morality is subjective but it certainly isn't purely subjective. (2) Even purely subjective thoughts have credence - they are based on logic. Even without observational support, logic is a phenomenon tempered by the patterns of our observed reality, which allows a person to function in society. By mere virtue of being able to function, logic isn't random, and therefore subjective thoughts can't be completely worthless. This is a pretty rough explanation, but hopefully you have some idea of what I'm talking about.
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iano Member (Idle past 1971 days) Posts: 6165 From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland. Joined: |
Certainty about anything, especially the existence of God, is impossible. I wouldn't gloss over your admission that the statement is a contradiction. A statement which contradicts itself cannot be true. Given that the statement is untrue, it follows that certainty about Gods existance IS a possibility. And not all that difficult either. All it would take is for God to make himself known to a person in a way that made them certain he existed.
Any true scientist will tell you that there is no such thing as a scientific fact; there are only theories That is a limitation in the very narrow field of HUMAN endeavor called Science. I can't see why problems we have in an area should be a problem for God.
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CK Member (Idle past 4158 days) Posts: 3221 Joined: |
quote: You can get that effect with mental illness or drugs or just by tricking people in the right way.
quote: It follows that an entirely subjective and individual certainty about God's existance is a possibility. Edited by CK, : No reason given. Edited by CK, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
It follows that an entirely subjective and individual certainty about God's existance is a possibility. Nevertheless it IS certainty and I have it too. So does Buz, and Randman and ever so many myriads.
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CK Member (Idle past 4158 days) Posts: 3221 Joined: |
Yes and?
Many suicide bombers swear they are going to get their legover with 40 lovely virgins when they get to heaven. Are you claiming this is true?
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