Hitch is dead

Dawn Bertot writes:

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What I meant is, can we be assured of its objectivity enough to know that claims concerning anyone elses behavior can be judged by it, your moral standard that is. If so why?

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Of course not: No human is completely objective. And since all human actions are based upon human motivations, we are stuck with ourselves to be our own judges.You seem to have confused a pithy cliche that has been attached to evolutionary theory with a philosophical path.

Dawn Bertot responds to me:

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As beautiful as this sounds, it actually has no real meaning, since all judgments and philosophical paths are but a myth

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And yet, people keep making them and following them, so they are necessarily real.

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Even you observations above will serve no useful purpose when one person decides that another person is bad, wrong, immoral, etc

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Except I can oppose them should my observations be at odds with their conclusions. Thus, they're quite real.

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Since you mentioned it, tell me what a philosophical path is, that will matter past our own species

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Why is that important? Is our own species insufficient? Last time I checked we aren't other species.

Dawn Bertot writes:

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Hitchens intimations about the possible existence or non-existence of God, have nothing or very little to do with Hitchens inability to formulate a platform for morality, seeing he has no way to establish a standard of morality, believing everything is just matter in motion

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Why is that a problem? After all, that's what everybody does. All moral standards were created by humans.

Dawn Bertot responds to me:

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My good natured, but simple friend, they may be real as people carrying out actions, or as a tree falling on an ardvark, but there is no real morality, the tree commited no crime and the ardvark was not murdered by the tree

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That's because trees don't have intention. Humans, however, do have intentions.Unless you're trying to say that there is no free will...at which point this message to you wasn't created by me but rather by mere physics. I had no ability to stop it for the molecules in my hand were forced to type the characters you are seeing.But because humans have intentions, we have the ability to analyze those intentions and put them into a framework that we have created. Is it arbitrary? Of course. But that is of no consequence.The rules of Monopoly were created by humans. They are completely arbitrary and they even vary from game to game. There are "house rules." For example, some people play such that all the money that must be paid from Chance and Community Chest cards, Income Tax, and Luxury Tax is placed not in the bank but rather under Free Parking. If you land there, you get whatever money happens to be there. This rule has proven to be so popular, it's now listed in the rules of Monopoly as an official variant.But despite the purely human-made nature of the rules, the way they fluid and change, that doesn't mean the rules don't exist. Try to break them and the other players will come down on you for cheating, possibly to the point of kicking you out of the game.

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If its just matter in motion, then there is no such thing as bad or good, ethical or unethical

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Why?

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My guess is that you are using these terms as the human species likes to use them.

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How else is there? We are humans.

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However, the colony of ants you murdered, plowing up the south forty does not share your same ethics.

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I never said they did. Why is that a problem?

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To demostrate my point that no ethics exist in a matter in motion world, you care little or nothing, or have any remorse for thier destruction, correct?

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IOWs, you dont feel like youve murdered anything correct?

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Do I? You seem to be capable of reading my mind, so why don't you tell me?

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Morals and ethics cant just be ethical for humans, it has to present itself as logical in a logical format, the exclude involving itself in a logical contradiction.

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I have not said otherwise. Why do you think there is a contradiction?

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Unfortunately, that will never work in a matter in motion existence

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Why not? As we have seen, humans have morality that they made up all by themselves. That morality is real and does exist. It's arbitrary, sure, but that has no bearing on whether or not it exists.

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You can call morals and ethics a shoeshine kit, that doesnt change that it has no real meaning

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Why do you think I have said that? It does have real meaning. Granted, it's only to the humans who practice it, but it was made by humans and they live their lives by it. Ergo, it has meaning.You seem to think that meaning has to come from without and are ignoring the possibility that it can come from within, too.

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If only humans are considered and consistency across theboard does not matter to you, correct?

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No. Incorrect.

Dawn Bertot responds to me:

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Again my friend, you have to start at a point, where we can to determine, whether your above intimation is even valid to begin with.

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Do you have evidence that humans don't create moral standards?

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There are no moral standards if its just matter in motion.

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Why not? Humans create moral standards all the time. And if we look at other species, they seem to create them, too. Chimpanzees have codes of conduct that even vary from troop to troop. How is that any different from what humans do?Since there are myriad moral standards across the human species, they can't all have come from a single source unless you are intimating that said source is capricious and arbitrary. Ergo, they came up with them on their own. So why do you claim otherwise?

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throwing terms, like moral and ethical at mindless matter, doesnt change the fact that person tyring do such a thing is involving him or herself in the worst form of contradiction

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Which is what, precisely?

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Do the other species get a say in the development of moral standards, or just humans?

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Do you mean with regard to human standards? Well, some people do look to animals. They develop a moral code based upon what they seem to think animals do ("Animals never go to war," for example...please note, I am not advocating or denying this premise. I am simply pointing out that there are people who look to animals for their moral standards.)But if you mean whether or not other species get to talk about it, well, we haven't really found any other species with whom we can communicate on a consistent, reliable basis. It's hard to have a discussion when there is nothing coming from the other side.

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When you violate your own code and kill and eat an animal, is that murder?

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Some people think that it is. Or have you never heard of PETA?

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Or does that just work for humans? Once you have established that is not murder for humans, you immediately redifine morality, correct?

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I'm not sure I understand why this is relevant. Human morality is constantly redefined since it is based upon our own understanding of the world around us. Before, it was perfectly moral to keep slaves. You could beat them, rape them, even kill them and it was not considered wrong because they were just slaves.Times have changed and we now we say that slavery is bad.That doesn't mean morality vanishes or that it comes from some other source. Humans are still the ones justifying it.

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See the problem with Hitch trying to characterize God as not great or religious people as insane. If its just matter in motion, the being a journalist was evil, if I get to make up the rules.

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You certainly get to make the rules for yourself. But since no man is an island, you will have to deal with the fact that the others around you may not agree with you and you will have to justify your claim.Nobody else will do it for you.