THE SHOWDOWN: Does God exist?

[ekiM]

Originally Posted by Scuzzy

Help me out Aftershock. Who defined rape as spiritually evil in man but not in animals? Was rape always considered evil in man since the chance creation of the universe, even before his existsance? Define Good and Evil for me, aside from what a group of people like and dislike. What makes Evil evil?

Your ignorance of moral philosophy is not an argument.

You think that morality comes from a higher power. You think morality cannot exist without someone telling you what it is. This is merely a restatement of your belief in divine command morality. It is not an argument against the existence of other moral philosophies, any more than my ignorance of relativity is an argument against relativity.

This whole line of argument is hopelessly naive.

[ekiM]

http://saintgasoline.com/comics/2006-12-13.JPG

The Euphyro dilemma first proposed by Plato brilliantly outlines the problem of such a moral system. Is that which is good commanded by God because it is good, or is it good because God commands it? The problem is evident: if it is commanded by God because it is good, then morality has nothing to do with God. God simply recognizes it as good just as everyone else does. His commanding it doesn’t give it any objective reality–it was real whether God commanded it or not. However, if we take the opposite side of the dilemma and say that the good is good because God commands it, then one can imagine scenarios in which murder and theft are made good simply because God has commanded it, and this seems intuitively implausble. We are also left with the awful realization that what we mean by “good” is only that God commanded it, not that it has any necessary intrinsic worth in itself–which trivializes our moral intuitions regarding the importance of ethical behaviour.

There are, of course, objections to this argument. Most of them claim that because God is defined as a morally perfect being, his commands are necessarily moral. In this way they attempt to avoid the conclusion that God could command murder and theft, thereby making those things morally good. However, the argument fails for the simple reason that it is circular. If one defines morality in terms of God’s commands, then to say that God is defined as “morally perfect” is trivial. God is only morally perfect because morality is based upon God’s own commands. Therefore, one can’t argue that God is incapable of commanding murder and theft to be good unless they posit morality as something independent of God. So those who embrace Divine Command morality cannot have it both ways: either God can make it so that murder and theft are morally good or else morality has nothing to do with God. Our moral intuitions clearly deny that murder and theft could ever be good so we are obviously left with the conclusion that morality is not dependent upon God.

[ekiM]

Originally Posted by accrede

I think this says it all scuzzy, morality is meaningless unless it is defined by a god, in your eyes. I agree with everything you have said in the above post except the issue of meaninglessness. Also you can't compare the behaviour of animals with our own behaviour directly, we are a unique species that shares some similarities with other different species but are not the same. You are right to say that things are wrong because we agree they are wrong, that does not make a secular or atheist moral construct meaningless.

I agree with everything up to the last sentence. Some moral philsophies state morality is a social construct. Not all of them do. Atheists can believe in an objective and absolute moral framework.

also, "unique species" is a tautology. pedantry.

[accrede]

Your argument is argued from the assumption that your moral framework is correct. Your argument is essentially nothing more than "If morality is defined by God then without a God there is no morality". This is trivial.

Exactly right.

Some moral philsophies state morality is a social construct. Not all of them do. Atheists can believe in an objective and absolute moral framework.

At some stage in any moral framework created by humans, assumptions and value judgements have to be made surely? Hmm, I might need to read a few of those links, got any ones specific to this issue?

also, "unique species" is a tautology. pedantry.

Agreed, but necessary in this thread wouldn't you agree?

[Scuzzy]

Originally Posted by ekiM

Apparently you haven't listened to anything I said in the post you respond to about the difference between a reasonable consequence and a necessary consequence. This is pretty frustrating!

ekiM you are jumping around all over the place and getting frustrated, I see that. That is why I am trying to limit my conversation with you specifically to this paragraph that you disagree with so that I can understand why you believe it to have other possibilities. Let's concentrate on this one paragraph so that I can see the possible alternatives you're trying to outline. For the time being I'm not going to go into 7 different threads with you to discuss this. I have listed to what you have said, that's why I'm trying to break this down to the sentence level now and understand your point of view. I don't believe you're following my logic because like several others you're extrapolating beliefs into my arguments that I'm not making.

The paragraph was:

Originally Posted by scuzzy

The same is true of the origins of the universe. I will try and show you the reasoning, in a different way. Without creationism the universe comes into being as the result of chance, no sentient influence. At the creation of the universe, if there is no sentient force at work then all that exists must be created by chance as well. Life must also have been created by chance, probably not at the start, but by chance at some time in the formation of the cosmos. This life would have been simple, singled celled, etc. It isn't like dogs just popped into existence as multi-celled organisms by chance. To get from simple life to what we have today, without sentient influence, would require some type of reproduction, change of genetic code, adaptation to the environment, etc. That's evolution. This is how non-creationism and evolution are linked.

We had agreed to everything in black. The red is what you stated has alternative possibilities. My question to you was: If there is no sentient influence in the universe at this time, what are the other possibilities for the creation of life at this time under atheism other then chance?

[accrede]

When I said this:

You are right to say that things are wrong because we agree they are wrong

I did not mean that morality is created by a social consensus formed on a "murder is right because we agree its ok" type of basis.

I meant that at some stage a human be it philosopher or layman, has to decide where things lie in whatever moral construct they are creating.

I realise that this is heading towards triviality:

"Humans create the morality, therefore humans create the morality"

[Everything]

I'm god, give mah sum tacos, mah is hungry, NOW!

[ekiM]

Originally Posted by accrede

At some stage in any moral framework created by humans, assumptions and value judgements have to be made surely?

I think the issue is with the word 'created'. A lot of perfectly respectable philosophies think that morality is not created by anyone, man or god. They think that a framework that describes what actions are moral or immoral exists, independently of any rational being to follow it, or perhaps created simply by the existence of rational beings as a necessary consequence of their existence (as opposed to being constructed BY those rational beings).

Now, does a moral framework always require assumptions to be made? "It depends". Immanuel Kant (a thiest) claimed that his theory of Categorical Imperitive was derived from pure reason. Plato and Aristotle believed morality was universal. Ayn Rand claimed Objectivism was derived purely from reason. John Locke claims humans have natural rights which are not granted either by God or by man to himself. John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism rests on the fairly non-contraversial assumption that happiness is good. Hobbes' contractionalism says that a moral action is one which a rational and unbiased observer would approve of. I could go on... the point really is not to argue for the correctness of any of thse but to show that there are a lot of moral theories that claim not to make any assumptions..

Note that I'm not endorsing any particular one of these philosophies here, I'm simply pointing out that there are very well argued positions that claim morality is objective.

To subscribe to any moral philosophy one has to state something like"I believe this moral philosophy to be correct". Maybe this is an example of making assumptions, too..

Originally Posted by accrede

Hmm, I might need to read a few of those links, got any ones specific to this issue?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics

Heh, well more specifically...

The two main areas that are releant here..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-ethics What ARE right and wrong?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics What actions are right or wrong?

Some specific topics that are on the "objective" side..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_objectivism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_absolutism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_intuitionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_non-naturalism

A few examples detailing philosophies that pupport to be objective..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_Imperative
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rights
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_%28Ayn_Rand%29

A couple of essays I found quickly that seem OK as introduction..

http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/objectiv.htm
http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/subj.htm

Sorry that wasn't just a few links.. and they aren't all specific to this.

[BinaryLife]

This is unrelated, but while I was reading your post Ekim I was thinking about the existence of sociopaths. Humans born with a clear concept of right or wrong but no compassion, for lack of a better word, to motivate them to actualy respond to it. I only ask because the concept of socipathic behavior interests me (as well as disturbs me). Since you're speaking about the origin of a sense of moralities, I simply wonder how it might apply to a human being who has the ability to completely disreguard morality, while still having a strong grasp on the differences between right and wrong.

[ekiM]

Originally Posted by accrede

When I said "You are right to say that things are wrong because we agree they are wrong"

I did not mean that morality is created by a social consensus formed on a "murder is right because we agree its ok" type of basis.

I meant that at some stage a human be it philosopher or layman, has to decide where things lie in whatever moral construct they are creating.

Yeah, before you can talk about a moral system you have to say what it is. And in some sense it cant be argued that this means that morality is not objective because you have to have beings who exist who follow it and even rational beings are not 100% rational - subjectivity. OTOH, you can say that there IS an objective moral framework that exists independently of man (you can say good & evil exist, or that rational beings have rights and duties, or you can say that God made up this framework, and so on..) but the subjectivity comes in when humans try to follow or interpret that objective moral framework. Humans aren't perfect, after all.

I don't see why someone would argue that theists have a different or special moral framework just because it is passesd down by God. Even if that framework is objective and absolute, theists could still be argued to interpret and follow that framework subjectively. Similarly, arguing that humans follow subjective moral frameworks is not an argument that an objective moral framework doesn't exist. It's an argument that humans are sadly flawed.

One can easily say that there is an absolute objective moral framework, God tried to tell us about it because being perfect he knows exactly what it says, but humans have to be subjective when they follow it. But one can make that argument and skip the "God" step and just say that humans are not able to perfectly understand the objective moral framework.. I think the Euphyro dilemma pretty much demolishes the idea that "Good is what God says is Good"..

[ekiM]

OK, found a much better source than Wikipedia which is still open access : http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html

Some relevant stuffs :

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism-moral/

[ekiM]

Originally Posted by Scuzzy

The paragraph was:

We had agreed to everything in black. The red is what you stated has alternative possibilities. My question to you was: If there is no sentient influence in the universe at this time, what are the other possibilities for the creation of life at this time under atheism other then chance?

I've already stated that I, personally, agree with everything in this paragraph.

I've repeatedly, clearly and patiently explained to you that atheists in general are not logically committed to anything other than "God(s) do(es) not exist" and the immediate consequences of that - if God does not exist, then any statement "God foos bar" is false. Obviously any assertion "God foos bar" is denied by an atheist as he doesn't believe God exists. However, it is simply not true that atheism commits one to assertions about the formation of the universe or the origin of life.

A rather trivial example is that an atheist can simply answer "I don't know" when asked about these things. Fred on his island is quite free to say "this island has always been here, it always will be, I don't know anything about the world outside". Given what we know about the universe, it is emminently unreasonable but not illogical for Fred to say this, even though he is an atheist.

You are never going to understand this, your mind is simply not open to understanding this.

I suggest we forget this bit and you just restrict your argument to trying to show that "If there is no God and the universe came into existence by chance and life came into existence by chance and the mechanism by which life changes over time is evolution then there is no such thing as morality".

EDIT: Perhaps a good first step would be for you to define what you mean by morality.

[fbw]

Originally Posted by Scuzzy

It really sounds like you're a Theosophist, which has been described as both a philosophy and a religion. As an atheist though, you agree the universe was not created by someone, correct?

Yeah, that is correct.

edit: lemme add though that I fully agree with ekiM on the issues of reasonable consequence and necessary consequence and tried my hand at explaining it as well, however, and the fact I put more weight in "The Big Bang" theory than in Creationalism doesn't mean all atheists do still. I think you're looking for us to give you the alternatives to the Big Bang theory or Creationalism, in which case we can't... but that doesn't mean it has to be one or the other or that either are right or wrong. Someone can say "I don't know", as he said, which still proves its not a necessary consequence.

[Scuzzy]

Originally Posted by ekiM

I've already stated that I, personally, agree with everything in this paragraph.

No, you haven't, but I'll take it now.

Originally Posted by ekiM

I've repeatedly, clearly and patiently explained to you that atheists in general are not logically committed to anything other than "God(s) do(es) not exist"

And I have not disagreed with you. However, were we do disagree is that in order for atheism to be absolutely true then other things must also be true. I could care less if they "know" or not how the universe is created, that's not the point here. If no one created the universe then there's only one other option, it was created by chance. You see that, you admit above that you see that. It's not possible, in any atheistic framework, for that not to be true. If an atheist below says:

Originally Posted by ekiM

A rather trivial example is that an atheist can simply answer "I don't know" when asked about these things.

... then that person isn't discounting that someone created the universe. If you don't if the universe was created by a higher being or not then your an Agnostic by default, not an Atheist. You can't have it both ways, "I don't know how the universe was created but I know that no God did it." is a complete contradiction, "not knowing" leaves the possibility open for a supreme being. If you don't know, then you don't know.

[ekiM]

Originally Posted by Scuzzy

And I have not disagreed with you. However, were we do disagree is that in order for atheism to be absolutely true then other things must also be true. I could care less if they "know" or not how the universe is created, that's not the point here. If no one created the universe then there's only one other option, it was created by chance. You see that, you admit above that you see that. It's not possible, in any atheistic framework, for that not to be true.

If "created by chance" means "was not created by a sentient being" then this is obviously a tautology. But "created by X" is a positive assertion and "not created by Y" is a negative assertion. You'll have to explain in more detail what "created by chance" means before it's evident why there is a dichtomy between "not created by a sentient being" and "created by chance". Why is it not a possible hypothesis that the universe has always existed?

Originally Posted by Scuzzy

... then that person isn't discounting that someone created the universe. If you don't if the universe was created by a higher being or not then your an Agnostic by default, not an Atheist. You can't have it both ways, "I don't know how the universe was created but I know that no God did it." is a complete contradiction, "not knowing" leaves the possibility open for a supreme being. If you don't know, then you don't know.

Rubbish. If my pet goldfish is missing and someone asks me what happened to it I might say "I don't know". They then ask me if I think aliens abducted it. I say "no, I don't believe that". It would be bloody stupid for them to say its a complete contradiction for me to discount one possiblity but express uncertainity about what actually happened.

Saying "I don't know how X occured" is not the same as saying "I think all concievable hypotheses for how X occursed are equally plausible, and I discount none of them". Saying "I don't know how the universe was formed but I don't believe it was created by a higher being" is not contradictory.

I don't know how a car engine works. This doesn't mean I consider it a possiblity that tiny devils are enslaved to turn the car wheels.

[ekiM]

Originally Posted by fbw

I think you're looking for us to give you the alternatives to the Big Bang theory or Creationalism, in which case we can't... but that doesn't mean it has to be one or the other or that either are right or wrong. Someone can say "I don't know", as he said, which still proves its not a necessary consequence.

Also, if you're interesed, there are several non-big bang cosmological theories. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-standard_cosmologies details a few resonably well. None are particular compelling to me, but they're out there.

Also, Big Bang says nothing about whether or not anything existed before Big Bang. We have no information about what, if anything, was going on before 13.7 billion years ago. It's a possible hypothesis that the universe goes into cycles of expansion and contraction and has always existed and always will. This possibility that the universe has always existed is one reasons I have reseverations about agreeing with, the somewhat unclear statement, "the universe was created by chance".

[Pixel]

This is the ultimate showdown of the ultimate destiny. Good guys, bad guys, and explosion as far as the eye can see.