In this three-part series I will look at some different ways of adjudicating conflicts between apparent divine commands and moral beliefs starting with Immanuel Kant.
In “Commonsense Atheism and the Canaanite Massacre” I addressed a question put to me by Luke from Commonsense Atheism,
“If Matt did think these events happened literally as described in the Bible, would he then conclude that God was an evil monster to command them? Or would he, in the end, agree with Bill Craig that genocide is okay as long as God feels like it?”
In my response I pointed out Craig claims that killing non-combatants in war is permissible if a loving and just God commands it (which is an implication of a divine command theory). This conditional is arguably true. Either it is possible for a just and loving omniscient person to command genocide or it is not. If it is then genocide would only be commanded in situations where a just and loving person, aware of all the relevant facts, could endorse it; under these circumstances it is hard to see how genocide could be evil. On the other hand, if it is impossible for a just and loving omniscient person to ever command genocide then the situation Luke mentions is one with an impossible antecedent. On the standard accounts of counter-factual logic, conditionals with impossible antecedents are true. So far from being absurd there are reasons for thinking this conditional is true.
The question Luke asks is really a species of a larger and important question in theological ethics. In Finite and Infinite Goods Robert Adams notes “A convincing defense of a divine command theory of the nature of obligation must address our darkest fear about God’s commands–the fear that God may command something evil.” Philip Quinn makes a similar point,
“[I]t seems possible that a theist should have both good reasons for believing that God has commanded him to perform a certain action and good reasons for believing that it would be morally wrong for him to perform that action. Thus a theist can be confronted with moral dilemmas of a peculiar sort.”
I suspect Luke is really asking how a theist can rationally respond to a dilemma of this sort. While I do not know what Luke’s opinion on this issue is, a common view is that if a theist has good reasons for believing an action is wrong then any claim that God has commanded should be rejected. The locus classicus for this position is Immanuel Kant; in Reason within the Bounds of Religion, Kant stated:
“Abraham should have replied to this supposedly divine voice: “That I ought not kill my good son is quite certain. But that you, this apparition, are God — of that I am not certain, and never can be, not even is [read: if] this voice rings down to me from (visible) heaven.”
Similarly, in the Conflict on the Faculties he states he states,
“That to take a human being’s life because of his religious faith is wrong is certain, unless (to allow the most extreme possibility) a divine will, made known to the inquisitor in some extraordinary way, has decreed otherwise. But that God has ever manifested this awful will is a matter of historical documentation and never apodictically certain. After all, the revelation reached the inquisitor only through the intermediary of human beings and their interpretation, and even if it were to appear to him to have come from God himself (like the command issued to Abraham to slaughter his own son like a sheep), yet it is at least possible that on this point error has prevailed.”
Kant, here, is discussing the kind of dilemma Quinn refers to. The dilemma can be spelled out as follows, in certain situations a theist might find him or herself with reason to affirm the following three propositions,
[1] Whatever God commands is morally permissible;
[2] God commands X;
[3] It is wrong to do X.
These three claims cannot all be true, so a rational person must reject one of them; the question is which one? Kant’s answer is that when faced with a dilemma of this sort the theist should reject [2]. It is worth elaborating on his position a bit.
First, note that Kant accepts [1] he grants that if we knew that God commanded the killing of a particular human being, it would be permissible to kill that human being. Kant’s objection is that one cannot be rational in believing that God has, in fact, issued such a command. Philip Quinn notes that Kant’s argument involves an appeal to an epistemic principle: whenever two conflicting claims differ in epistemic status, the claim with the lower status is to be rejected. Kant contends that moral claims such as “it is wrong to kill innocent people” are certain. However, claims that God commands or forbids a certain action are not certain and never can be. From these points it follows that a rational person will accept [3] and reject [2].
Despite its appeal Kant’s argument is flawed for several reasons. Philip Quinn notes two problems. First, “Kant has an extremely optimistic view of our ability to attain epistemic certainty about principles of moral wrongness,” he thinks we can be certain of moral claims. This, however, is dubious. There are some moral claims of which I am fairly certain. I am certain, for example, that it is wrong to inflict as much pain on another as I can merely for my own entertainment. I am fairly certain that killing, assault, theft and lying are prima facie wrong and can only be justified if some overriding moral reason applies. However, many moral claims are highly controversial and are far from certain at all. Consider, for example, the debate over whether the bombing of Hiroshima was justified because it saved a huge number of lives by ending a war early. While I myself do not share this opinion, I would not say I am certain about it. Similarly, consider moral debates about capital punishment or euthanasia or affirmative action. While I believe there are defensible and justified answers to these questions, I doubt we can claim certainty about answers to these questions.
Second, Kant claims that we can never be certain that God has prohibited a certain action. Quinn notes, “It would thus seem to be well within God’s power to communicate to us a sign that confers on the claim that God commands some intolerant behavior, for example, issuing threats to heretics, a fairly high epistemic status.” If God were to do this then we would have certainty that he had commanded the action. So it is not clear that beliefs about what God wills are always less certain than moral beliefs.
I am inclined to push this criticism further. It seems to me that many sceptical worries that are raised about God and his commands apply with equal force to moral beliefs. Consider three common concerns sceptics raise about religion. One is the claim that the existence of God is not necessary to explain any empirical phenomena. The second is the concern that the claim God exists and has commanded a particular action cannot be empirically demonstrated or proven to exist. The third is the widespread pluralism with regard to both the existence of God and his nature. All three of these worries apply to moral beliefs. The existence of moral properties appears unnecessary to explain any empirical phenomena, almost any empirical phenomena can be explained equally well by accepting that moral beliefs are all false but that people think they are true. Attempts to prove that moral beliefs are true from non-moral premises alone are probably more controversial than any argument for the existence of God. And there is widespread pluralism over whether moral properties exist; nihilists and non-cognitivists deny such properties exist and amongst believers in the truth of moral beliefs, there is widespread disagreement over the nature of morality. Intuitionists contend it is a non-natural property, naturalists contend it is a natural property but disagree over what the natural property in question is, supernaturalists contend it is a divine command or a theological property and so on.
In fact, Kant’s own argument provides an example of this point. Kant argues in The Conflict in the Faculties that we can never be certain that God has commanded an action because,
“the revelation reached the inquisitor only through the intermediary of human beings and their interpretation, and even if it were to appear to him to have come from God himself (like the command issued to Abraham to slaughter his own son like a sheep), yet it is at least possible that on this point error has prevailed.”
But this is equally true of many moral beliefs, a good amount of what people believe with regards to morality comes to them through the intermediary of human beings and their interpretation. Most westerners belief’s in liberal ideals, such as, the equality of women, opposition to slavery and so are mediated through human beings. Moreover, even if we directly intuit moral properties, it is possible that we are mistaken. Human moral intuitions and judgements are fallible and can err. So in many instances I am inclined to think that the sceptical worries people raise to conclude that theological beliefs are uncertain apply also to moral beliefs. To appeal to these concerns, so as to claim that belief about God’s will is less certain than moral beliefs, is to engage in special pleading.
In my next post I will look at Robert Adams’ defence of Kant’s position and then I will look at Philip Quinn’s alternative.
RELATED POSTS:
God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part II Robert Adams
God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part III Philip Quinn
Tags: Canaanites · Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · Kant · Luke Muehlhauser · Old Testament Ethics · Philip Quinn · Religious History · Robert Adams185 Comments
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
I confess to being a little slow so I read this 3 times. I’m still not sure what it is intended to convey aside from the fact that, if divine command theory were true, it still would be of little assistance in guiding human moral decision making.
In any event, I’m interested to know if Matt has reviewed this article by Stephen Maitzen: http://philosophy.acadiau.ca/tl_files/sites/philosophy/resources/documents/Maitzen_DCM.pdf Penny for your thoughts?
The criteria Kant uses to question whether we can know God’s moral commands can be applied to any system of moral philosophy.
X says Y is wrong.
How does X know, and why should I care?
Alternatively.
X says Y is wrong.
I kill X.
Y is not wrong.
I think this just shows how theological “logic” can be used to justify the most immoral actions – and that religious or divine command ethics is relativist.
Surely genocide is evil whoever commands it – and lets face it everybody’s god is believed to be just and loving by the believer. The victim see it differently.
By basing my ethics on objective reality, on the facts of our existence I have absolutely no trouble finding genocide immoral. To argue otherwise is surely obscene.
Your “logic” makes a great play of how some moral decisions may be difficult. True, they may be and in such cases should be discussed by society intelligently. The contribution of widely differing views in a pluralist society is important. Many other moral decisions are straightforward to someone who considers the objective facts. They are not a matter of opinion.
Someone whose ethics are determined by an authority, by command, is inhuman and dangerous. No accident that armies train their soldiers to follow orders that way. But in the end society judges people on their own moral integrity and doesn’t excuse atrocities committed by those who are only following orders.
Even for a believer, if they are not inhuman, surely objective reality comes first in determining moral decisions. Any command from a just loving god or leader (think Hitler, Stalin, Mao who were considered as such by their supporters) can be judged according to ones own moral grammar.
When a believer (in gods or political leaders) does not have the ability to consider such commands and reject them when they conflict with objectively determined morality they are a danger to society.
It’s irresponsible to promote arguments supporting such inhuman attitudes.
Hey Ken, you can’t go wrong when you have Sammy Harris on your side! He even looks like Ben Stiller.
I agree Matt, knowledge of morality is not clearly stronger than knowledge of God’s commands (which is weaker than knowledge of God’s existence).
Personally I find the knowledge that God has commanded some things stronger than some minor ethical questions.
The Christian perspective, I would argue, is that we can be more certain of God’s commands scripturally from whence we derive explicit morality, than we can be of morality other than general broad principles. Specific moral revelation teaches us much more than general moral revelation (though the existence of the latter is very certain), and we know that fallen man reasons fallibly thus Scripture offers a corrective to our premises and conclusions.
Ken, feel free to justify your position that genocide is immoral from an atheist and evolutionary perspective.
This seems rather counter intuitive, if wiping out your gene pool improves the resources and reproductive sucess of my gene pool surely thats a good thing from my point of view. It is certainly a strategy that is not unknown in the animal kingdom.
Matt
I guess the answer may be coming but i will ask anyway, the phrase
“Whatever God commands is morally permissible”
seems to me to be fundamentally mistaken or a deliberate twisting of the truth applied without context.
Many times through the Bible God commands things that are time, place, person, situation specific and no precedent is made or implied.
Sometimes God used the Israelites to achieve His own ends, no permission is given or implied that they were in any way permitted to repeat such actions.
Other times God used the Babylonians , Assyrians, Romans to achieve His own ends, eg the crucifixion of Christ. We could argue over specific vs permitted will of God,but the crucifixion was the will of God hence effectively the command of God.
Surely it is a step too far to say that “What ever God commands is morally permissible” more specifically since it is implied “What ever God commands is morally permissible to us”
Jeremy, I would distiguish between Gods sovereign will and what God commands. David’s commiting adultery with Bathsheba for example was contrary to Gods commands yet God allowed it to happen. Its Gods commands not his soverigen will that I am refering to.
Moreover, when I say what “God commands is permitted” I mean that whatever God commands a person to do at a time it is permissible for that person to do at that time. In many instances the commands are to all people for all time such as “do not murder”. But my view leaves open the possibility that there might be specific commands to specific people for specific times. Some of the OT laws a like this I think.
I’m glad we agree on that since it seems to me that the phrase is intended quite differently when people like Bradbury use it in suggesting that Christians face an insurmountable moral dilemma wrt the God of the OT etc.
Matt, in some ways would that be like the physical laws. Under normal circumstances water does not support a vertically oriented person, yet by God’s decree Jesus (and Paul) could stroll across the lake. Just because they got to do it does not mean that we ever could.
I think there might be reason to reject premise [2], if we believe in something like progressive revelation. Perhaps God does command things that are actually against His will in terms of morality, but which nevertheless accomplish His overriding desire of moving people to a place where they eventually do what God wills.
Take the issue of slavery. God clearly gave injunctions for slavery, injunctions that humanized the institution and moved it in a more moral direction. But it was a while before God implied that slavery itself was entirely to be done away with, which means that, at least for a time, God’s commands included in them morally bad, even morally wrong, aspects, even if they were an improvement over the surrounding cultures. The reason for this is because people are not prepared to move from primitive to morally perfect in one grand step. It would simply be too much for them, and so God moves them gradually to more adequate morality. Part of that learning process is learning about what leads to flourishing and what doesn’t, and people need to learn that little by little.
Perhaps this means we should draw a distinction between that which God wills in terms of prescribing moral duties, and that which He commands. The two may not necessarily coincide, although I’m sure we could argue that God commands that which will get people eventually to His will. Eleanor Stump had a good article on this from the “My Ways Are Not Your Ways” conference at Notre Dame.
Otherwise, it seems to me, we are stuck defending every single command in the Old Testament as being morally adequate, which would be a tough line to take.
Jason, I presume that you mean Peter and not Paul. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Nobody seriously believes the walking on water story. They might want to believe but they can’t.
Jeremy, it seems really pitiful to have to explain to you why genocide is wrong from a non-religious viewpoint. After all, it seems more to to be the province of action of the religious and ideologically dogmatic – they are the ones with the problem. Matt has been arguing that from a religious viewpoint he can justify genocide – you should be concerned about this “Flannagan Delusion” – it is dangerous.
The fact is that our society, and actually the world community, has come to this conclusion simply from secular considerations. (Here I don’t use secular as anti-religious, but as inclusive and concerned with the real world. Many religious people are hence secular.)
We have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (although some religion don’t accept this completely). It is secular.
The ideas in this Declaration have an objective basis. We are an intelligent, social, empathetic species. many things flow from that – such as the “Golden Rule”, concepts of human dignity and rights, concern for others – our kin and extension of that to our non-kin, etc.
From that we can derive moral conclusions about slavery, apartheid, segregation, discrimination against women, attitudes towards sexuality and discrimination against homosexuals, etc. These areas have been problematic for religions, with different people using religion to justify both sides in each case.
These secular ethics have a factual, objective basis – both in the nature of our species and the facts of our existence.
In contrast, religious ethics tends to a relativistic morality. Moral positions when based only on authority, divine commands, require no rational consideration, no consideration of reality, no contact with one’s innate intuitions or empathy. Just blindly following commands.
No wonder religion can be used to justify genocide.
The fact is, of course, most religious people don’t follow a divine command ethics or religious morality. They may rationalise and explain away their moral actions by claiming a religious scource. But in reality their real source is the same as mine. It has an objecitve basis.,
Those religious people who genuinely follow divine commands and religious authority are dangerous. They tend to fly planes into buildings, terrorise innocent people, suppress others rights, blow up clinics, Mosques, churches, markets, etc.
I have no problem determining that genocide is wrong. But Matt certainly does, doesn’t he?
@ Kyle
I think you make some excellent points about the realities of moving human behaviour from one standard to a much higher standard. Especially in view of the fact that even now large portions of the worlds population do not share the best of contemporary western standards.
Even now Politicians spend a lot of time on spin, propaganda, consultation trying to lead people to change because you cant really force them.
@TAM
Of course lots of Christians believe Peter walked on water. A God who could create the universe isnt going to have any trouble with the events recorded as miracles. I know you dont believe but your understanding of the nature of a Creator God is way too small.
“Genocide” is a misnomer here. Even if the story teaches that non-combatants were killed, we still don’t have a modern example of genocide – that is, killing a group of people because of their race. We would just have a total extermination of a people, children included.
Now the question is, could there ever be good reasons for God to command us to kill a non-soldier? In the wider scheme of things, with God knowing everything he does about providence and history, could it ever be right for God to command us to kill a non-soldier?
If you say no, and you believe you have certainty on that moral judgment, then as a theist you will just reject any purported command as possibly coming from a perfectly good God (that is, if you believe a command of God is necessarily always intended to prescribe an objective moral duty). If you say yes, then you will say it is possible for God to have a good reason and give that command.
I’m inclined to think it could never be morally right to kill a non-soldier. So if God allegedly commands it as something morally good, I either have to conclude that it is not God commanding it (since God is by definition perfectly good), or I will conclude that God had good reasons to command it, even though it is objectively morally wrong (perhaps such a command represents an improvement over a wider, even more barbaric culture, and perhaps this is the most the Hebrews could morally tolerate in terms of growth at that time – all of this being part of God’s progressive revelation that culminates in the perfect revelation of Jesus).
I will say though that I don’t think it’s wildly implausible that there might be overriding reasons to kill a non-combatant. We already believe that it is sometimes right to inflict insane amounts of pain on innocent persons (to save their life in surgery, for instance, if there is no other way). Is it really so implausible to suggest that there might be some instances in which the perfectly good God of the universe, in his infinite knowledge, might have a good reason for you to inflict death on someone innocent?
Whoops, I equivocated between THERE BEING GOOD REASONS FOR GOD TO COMMAND X and X BEING MORALLY RIGHT OR PERMISSIBLE AS A RESULT OF GOD’S COMMAND. I was speaking about the latter in this last post.
Not that I agree with all of the following but there are certainly grounds for killing non soldiers in some situations :
– mercy killing / suicide
– execution of convicted murderers
– stopping a seriously violent rampage
– in self defense or defense of innocent parties
– collateral damage stopping a greater evil
Atheism has no objective basis for defining good or evil so Ken’s complaints are somewhat anaemic
@ Ken
I think you have completely failed to justify genocide being wrong if only because it is continuing to happen to greater or lesser extent all over the world [including UDHR signatories] mostly for political reasons. Also there is still plenty of slavery in the world, child labour, fmg etc none of which has anything to do with religion.
All you have demonstrated is how a western dominated UN has come to enshrine in International Law [largely toothless] some ideas that are currently fashionable and ignored by large portions of the world even those who are signitories.
Furthermore i think you display an unrealistic utopian view of human nature completely at odds with historical reality. You like to blame all the things you think bad on religion rather than on mankind. Its not even a self consistant point of view, because if religions are all effectively delusional and false then all these bad things are just characteristic of humankind.
Which raises the question, what are you going to do to change the hearts of men?
Jeremy – this is pathetic. You say “I think you have completely failed to justify genocide being wrong if only because it is continuing to happen to greater or lesser extent all over the world”.
So because a thing happens it can’t be wrong?
Come on. You are desperate to justify genocide just because your mates (or Matt) do.
That is obscene.
Ropata, I have given you an objective basis for morality and conclusion that things like genocide, slavery, racism, discrimination against women and homesexuals, etc is wrong.
Typically you cover your, eyes and ears and go “nah, nah’l
You are in denial and end up supporting Matt’s vile support for the unsupportable. You need a god to do that. Don’t you!
Ken, actually nowhere in the above post do I justify Genocide. What I said was
Either it is possible for a just and loving omniscient person to command genocide or it is not. If it is then genocide would only be commanded in situations where a just and loving person, aware of all the relevant facts, could endorse it; under these circumstances it is hard to see how genocide could be evil. On the other hand, if it is impossible for a just and loving omniscient person to ever command genocide then the situation Luke mentions is one with an impossible antecedent. On the standard accounts of counter-factual logic, conditionals with impossible antecedents are true. “
Here I simply state a disjunction, either its possible for a loving just being to command Genocide or its not. I point out that on either assumption if a perfectly just and loving omniscient being commanded it it would be permissible. Nowhere do I actually say genocide is permissible.
Once again you misrepresent what others say.
Well, let’s here it from you Matt.
Is genocide morally right or wrong?
Most of us can answer that with a yes or no. Can you? Will you?
Whoops, those last 2 anon comments were obviously mine. Something tipped out my details.
@ Ken
I am not remotely interested in justifying genocide, but you have provided no reason for it being wrong. All you have managed to say is that some of the worlds nations have agreed that it is wrong, and i have pointed out that not even all of them bother to practice what they haved signed up to.
So what we actually have is a case of public declaration vs private practice. Hardly a moral position.
What happens if some of those nations change their mind and have the power to follow through?
Where will your moral consensus be then?
You are confusing expedient with right.
Does the UNDHR appeal to any higher philosophical principle than secular ethics based on Ken’s made-up philosophy of “reality” (actually a form of existentialism)?
If it is based on a general concord of modern social mores then it seems more like a subjective morality to me. People are “subjects” are we not?
(I fully endorse it by the way!)
Ropata, Jeremy – what about you two.
Do you think genocide is morally wright or wrong?
Both of you have avoided by objective reasons for claiming it is wrong.
Perhaps that’s because you actually will support it?
Simple enough to clarify – if you will?
Ken, the answer is pretty simple
‘Thou shalt not commit murder”
‘Vengence belongs to the Lord”
Life and death belong to God the giver of life not to man.
On Atheism and evolution there is only moral nihilism and expediency [what works] , any thing else is just opinion and self delusion. Expediency is subject to change at any time. A moral standard based on expediency is hardly a standard of any kind.
One thing that always amazes me about you atheists is that while you deny God, at the same time you think He should fit in with what you think is moral [which keeps changing with the current fashion] and for some reason you seem to think the current fashion is the standard.
History and right have always been decided by the winners, what possible grounds have you for believing your current version of right is right. Ken you have grown up with a western worldview, you might like to consider what your version of morality [right and wrong] would look like if you had grown up in India , Asia or Papua New Guinea. Certainly the value you would place on individual life might be very different. Up untill very recently in PNG you would have seen an outsider as a food source, the recent change has been largely imposed by the Western world view. Or you might like to think what the world and the resultant moral landscape would be like if the Nazis and Japan had won WW2.
There is another thought you might like to consider, in this discussion of “genocide” everyone keeps projecting 21C AD understanding of “innocence” and “individuality” on to 15 C BC situations. The 15C BC canaanities simply wouldnt understand your objections, the whole “in group/out group” thing was much stronger, They lived and died as families, tribes, little kingdoms, not as individuals.
So we get to the nub of the problem with self determined morals arrived at without reference to an external standard, they are just opinions, no better no worse than any other opinion, no more right or wrong, entirely subject to change, they are entirely relative. We call this Post-Modernism, whats right for you is right for you, whats right for me is right for me and you have no authority to say or suggest otherwise.
I think a Christian moral standard with God as moral authority is more consistant, more logical, more rational and fudamentally more realistic than any of the alternatives and it actually adressess right and wrong not just contemporary opinion or fashion.
Dont get me wrong Ken , we all fail to live up to the standard Christ set, but it is a standard we can aim for.
So Jeremy, why not answer my question on genocide? Do you think it wrong?
Clearly you don’t understand how people like me come to our moral decisions. But one thing is clear I have no problem judging that genocide us wrong. For good objective reasons.
I get the impression that if you were told by your religious leader, read it in your “holy” book or heard voices to the effect that you were being commanded to kill a group of people, commit genocide, you would do so.
What would you do in that situation? Follow orders or think for yourself?
Ken, yes of course I believe Genocide is wrong.
Ken it’s only your fevered imagination that is conjuring up these fantasies of genocidal maniacs on the internet. The other people in this thread are trying to discuss moral dilemmas. One horn of the dilemma (trilemma?) is that genocide is obviously wrong, the other is God’s warlike commands in the OT, and a third premise is that God is perfectly just, loving, and wise.
Ken the follow orders or think for yourself is a false dillemia.
If one believed a perfectly good, omnscient rational person commanded X then to do the opposite would be irrational. It would be to suggest that such a being had either got the facts wrong, or was not thinking straight or somehow lacked empathy compassion justice etc and by definition these things are all false.
What you would do is asses wether or not the command which purported to be from God was in fact from God. That would involve examining reasons autonomously, and that is what these posts are about.
roptata states it well: “One horn of the dilemma (trilemma?) is that genocide is obviously wrong, the other is God’s warlike commands in the OT, and a third premise is that God is perfectly just, loving, and wise”
No trilmma. Makes perfect sense if god is a figment of your imagination.
Matt, great to hear you think genocide is wrong.
I wonder how you come to that conclusion though. Because you then go on to say “If one believed a perfectly good, omnscient rational person commanded X then to do the opposite would be irrational.” So in such a situation you would follow orders and commit genocide! And that is the key problem with divine command ethics.
Because isn’t that exactly what happens when people commit genocide for religious, racist or ideological reasons?
People have followed orders because they considered their great leader or god to
Be omniscient. Think of the adulation for Hitler, Mao, Stalin, the Japanese Emperor, the Russian Tsar, etc. Think of Koney, the leader of the Lords Liberation Army fighting to set ip a theocracy in Uganda. He follows the commands of his Christian god conveyed to him by angels, and commits crimes like sexual slavery, murder, torture, etc.
Personally I can work out for myself that genocide is wrong, based on objective facts about humanity and our situation. So even if someone I respect immensely, or who had some sort of state power over me gave the order I could think for myself and refuse.
I hope it is the same with you – I believe it is for most religious people who use religious morality as a rationalisation but in the end get their morality from the same place as me.
But your willingness to accept a command from your god without question is dangerous. You could be easily convinced that the commands from your religious leader, your “holy” book or the voices in your head were authentically those of your god. It has certainly happened with religious people, hasn’t it?
In such a situation you aren’t thinking for yourself. You aren’t morally autonomous, your
moral actions are not based on objective facts. Your morality would be complete relativist. And you would be capable of doing evil things.
Your last sentence perhaps saves you: ” That would involve examining reasons autonomously,.” I suggest that if you do so you are getting your ethics from the same place as me – the objective nature if the situation and of humanity.
You would be concluding that your god was giving you moral commands in the same way I would.
But what a dilemma. Acknowledging an authentic “divine” command but finding it was morally wrong! But, then again people have been in that situation and relied on their conscience to put them right.
My problem Ken is you keep claiming you have objective reasons but never actually give any. I dont think you have adequately demonstrated genocide is wrong at all.
I thought my answer was very clear , murder is wrong , the difference between one murder or many is quantative not qualitative.
However you arrive at you moral viewpoint, you havent managed to clarify your apparent confusion between “what works”[adaptive advantage] and “right and wrong”, in fact you seem to believe that “what works” is morally right. You obviously dislike many practices that have worked for many groups throughout history. Seems more than a little inconsistant.
You might like to do a little research into protestant understanding of lines of authority, no “religious leader” would have any power or authority to command any orthodox protestant Christian to do anything, let alone commit a genocide. Read “Timothy”, leadership is by example and service, not by ruling.
You may also like to look at my “Holy Book” which you know full well is called the Bible, you will not find anything in there commanding Christians to commit Genocide against any group.
Rather you will find the “Parable of the Good Samaritan”, Christ’s teaching on who is your neighbour and how to love him.
Any voices i heard in my head would have to measure up to the standards Christ taught before i paid them any attention.
I cant help but notice that while demanding answers of myself and Ropata and Matt, you continue to be excellent at avoiding questions directed at yourself.
Ken you are starting to sound a little Roman Catholic, a little one true churchish, a little mine is the only way to think.
“Because isn’t that exactly what happens when people commit genocide for religious, racist or ideological reasons?
People have followed orders because they considered their great leader or god to
Be omniscient. Think of the adulation for Hitler, Mao, Stalin, the Japanese Emperor, the Russian Tsar, etc. Think of Koney, the leader of the Lords Liberation Army”
In this quote you have pretty much included every class of people who have perpetrated great evil, so you are back to describing a human problem rather than a religious one. We are back again to the problem with the character of man, everything you are complaining about is just symptomatic of that character.
So a real question, do you believe you are somehow free of the character flaws of mankind?.
By the way, the flawed character of mankind is one very good reason for not trusting a human derived concept of morality. All our internally derived standards are likely to be as flawed as we are.
““If one believed a perfectly good, omnscient rational person commanded X then to do the opposite would be irrational.” ”
You need to read more carefully, Ken. Matt admitted that this CONDITIONAL, though true, may very well turn out to have an impossible antecedent. That is, it may very well be impossible for a perfectly good and loving God ever to command genocide. There may in the end never be any possible good reasons to commit genocide. Matt is getting to this. But if a perfectly good God COULD command it, then of course it would be morally permissible on standard accounts of DCT.
By the way, theists do not discount moral intuitions and objective facts outside of revelation in order to arrive at moral truth. We just also consider divine commands as part of what feeds into our moral judgment, and quite naturally so (much of the Western ethical traditional tradition has been shaped by Judeo-Christian moral values). This doesn’t mean there is no criteria for accepting a command as truly from a perfectly good God, or that God can command anything and we’d go along with it. Matt is getting to this, too. But for now, you just misconstrue what he is saying.
Ken, the more I read your criticisms of DCT. The more it seems to me that you keep conflating two seperate issues.
[1] If God ( a loving just omniscient perfectly rational being) commands X then X is permissible.
[1′] If a person or group of people claim that God commands X then X is permissible.
This is not the same thing.
Jeremy, I have several times in this discussion provided an objective basis for moral decisions. You seem to purposely ignore or avoid my contribution. I can’t help but think that is purposeful – especially when you throw back at me silly religious dogma about atheists having no basis for their moral decisions, etc.
For the last time – and please no claiming this hasn’t been done:
We are an intelligent, empathetic, social, conscious species. This provides us with a material basis for concepts of right and wrong. As social beings we have evolved intuitions of justice, fairness, etc. As empathetic beings we have the ability to feel others pain, to put ourselves in their shoes. As an intelligent species we have the ability to logically consider aspects of reality and their influences on us and others. As conscious beings we can interact, be aware, and be self aware.
So we can develop concepts of right and wrong which are based on harm to us and others, pain, fairness, justice, etc. And on our concepts of humanity.
And as conscious, intelligent, social and empathetic beings we are capable of looking at the objective facts of our existence and the influences these exert on us and others. At our interactions and the extent to which they cause pleasure, harm, pain. And at the effects of our interactions on justice and humaneness.
OK – I won’t repeat this. However, I am quite prepared to respond to any questions you may have to clarify. But FFS sake no claims that I haven’t provided this argument.
Now you say murder is wrong and genocide is just several murders. I think it is far more than that (It is more a crime against humanity), but putting that aside – why do you think murder is wrong?
If you are like most people you will have arrived at that position from the objective facts of our nature and existence (see above). However, you might rationalise and claim it is due to the 10 commandments, or similar (your “holy” book).
Now my point is if that is not a rationalisation, if in fact that is how you get your morality, then you are the victim of divine command ethics. Your ethics are immature. You are not morally autonomous. And that makes you dangerous becuase you have absolutely no way of determining if a divine command is moral or not.
A morally autonomous person can look at a book like the bible. Not see it as “holy” and treat it as an ancient book. They can use it as a source of pleasure, or inspiration. But not as a source of commands, especially ethical commands.
The fact that it contains abhorrent commands is of not problem to the autonomous person – probably most ancient books do. But if you are not morally autonomous or mature and you take those commands seriously (you see them as divine because you see the book as “holy”) then you are dangerous.
You are capable of behaving like Kony, the Nazis, the Maoist Red Guards, the Russian White Guards, the Japanese Imperial soldier, the Stalinists, etc. All these people have a divine commander, a (as Matt says) “perfectly good, omniscient rational person” or god who you trust implicitly and whose orders you are prepared to follow without question.
You are dangerous. Capable of religious violence.
Matt, I understand completely – there is no conflation on my part.
What is the reality of your claim?
[1] If God ( a loving just omniscient perfectly rational being) commands X then X is permissible.
[1′] If a person or group of people claim that God commands X then X is permissible.
This is not the same thing.
Kony is getting his commands from angels in direct contact with his god. And that is the belief of many Ugandans who fear him.
Many people get their commands direct from their god via voices they hear (which may be telling them to kill their children).
Many get their commands via their god’s representative (eg the pope or Imams) who is infallible.
Many get their commands from “holy” books.
Now in all cases the recipient can be fooled into considering these commands are from their god, that they are authentic. In fact many people have been “educated” or indoctrinated as children to strongly believe that.
The fact that they aren’t from their god, that there is no god, or that theologians indulge in bafflegab to explain these abhorrent commands away, is immaterial. The recipients can still see these as divine commands These people still go out and kill their children, fly planes into buildings, blow up mosques, government buildings , trains and markets. Short of that they can make life miserable for their children and people around them.
It is also a fact that religious and political leaders can have, and have had, a god like status. The Japanese Emporer (and many other kings, etc.,) was considered divine. The Russian Tsar was known as the “Little Father” almost divine and certainly in the line of command from god. Stalin had a similar standing with most Russians. Mao certainly had divine status and was promoted to be followed unquestioningly. As was Hitler.
Matt – that is the reality. Your mental gymnastics to explain away the abhorrent commands may satisfy you and your mates who really base their moral decisions on objective facts (and that is why they know these commands are abhorrent). But that is a waste of time for those recipients of such commands who are taking them seriously.
Worse, this waffling actually clears the way for such people. Instead of standing up against religious violence and extremism you are providing an ideological sanctuary. Your unwillingness to come out and declare what you know as wrong (because it is seen as offensive to a “holy” book) is easily interpreted as encouragement.
That’s why I call such theological “logic” obscene.
Sorry Ken ethical justifications require arguments not repeating mantras or slogans.
For example, whats your response to the arguments by Tooley and Singer and Wolterstorff that there is no secular basis for saying that infants have rights or at least a right to life.
Matt – this sounds very much like a mantra and slogan to me:
“the arguments by Tooley and Singer and Wolterstorff that there is no secular basis for saying that infants have rights or at least a right to life.”
I believe these people can talk for themselves – and you are hardly a reliable authority for their views. If I want their views I will of course read them – not you. And I am sure that their discussion of this topic is a hell of a lot more complex and nuanced than your claim. I am happy to respond to, criticise even, their views but it would indeed be credulous to assume they are as you present them.
The fact remains that I have presented an objective basis of our morality and for a secular morality. I don’t think you can use that to argue against the moral claim“that infants have rights or at least a right to life” – Far from it. Significantly you make no attempt and instead try to divert to a red herring.
Yet, divine command ethics can produce that sort of conclusion. And has. You are having to perform all sorts of mental gymnastics to “explain away” such moral commands. It’s not credible for you to opt out by putting words in others’ mouths.
@ Ken,
Not sure how the others got their perspectives with regard to the comments they’ve posted, but I’m with you on this thread, that you have obviously owned so far.
Keep it up Ken, it’s really fun watching them, “Jelly-wrestling” in response, as you like to say!
Ok Ken, so you admit the distinction and then immediately conflate it again.
You cited a series of cases where people believe, mistakenly, that God commanded X. the fact that people can mistakenly believe God commanded something hardly proves anything.
many people mistakenly believe science teaches Creationism, does it follow science is relativistic?
Moreover, many people mistakenly believe certain actions are right which are not. Does that mean claims about things being right or wrong are problematic.
The fact is, there is almost nothing that people cannot mistakenly form opinions about. So what?
Matt, how do you know they were mistaken?
Do you have a direct line to your god?
The fact is these people did not think they were mistaken at all – and you cannot prove they were.
Their divine commands are just as valid as yours. The have no objective basis – hence their relativism.
Actually Ken infanticide was practised cross culturally in most societies prior to the rise of Christianity. In Rome and Greece it was considered acceptable for parents to expose there children if they did not want them.
The exception has been post Christian and post islamic societies. This was due to the fact these socities adopted theological beliefs that God prohibited infanticide. That’s simply historical fact.
Today infanticide is widely advocated by secular ethicists, its theological and religious ethicists who are often the staunchest opponents. This to is a fact.
So your claim that secular ethics easily supports prohibitions on infanticide, repeatedly asserted despite numerous important arguments to the contrary and divine command ethics does not simply does not bear scrutiny.
Perhaps you can answer me Singer and Tooley’s question. What non- theological property does an infant have that can plausibly be said to ground a right to life?
Especially given that we do not grant full right to life to animals nor do secularist like your self do this for fetuses.
Please identify a non theological property infants have animals and fetuses lack that can plausibly ground a right to life?
Apparently this is really easy for secular ethicist, so easy that leading secular ethics in this particular field miss it.
I am all ears.
Very noticeable, Matt, that you avoid my questions. And repeat your mantra.
You are not in a position to speak for “secular ethicists” and I certainly don’t recognize any reliability in what you claim. Singer and Tooley can speak for themselves – I don’t trust you to reflect their views. And they are irrelevant to my arguments. It’s noticeable that you continue to ignore my outline of an objective basis for human morality. What is your problem?
As for divine command ethics – why do you ignore my questions?
I repeat my last comment:
“Matt, how do you know they were mistaken?
Do you have a direct line to your god?
The fact is these people did not think they were mistaken at all – and you cannot prove they were.
Their divine commands are just as valid as yours. They have no objective basis – hence their relativism.”
You may be all ears but your red herrings and
silence on my questions speak volumes
[…] Over on his blog, Matt Flannagan has begun addressing the question: Can a perfectly loving and just God command genocide? Luke, from Common Sense Atheism, asked Matt if it were granted that a real God really did command genocide, would Matt conclude that this God is a moral monster. Luke asked: If Matt did think these events happened literally as described in the Bible, would he then conclude that God was an evil monster to command them? Or would he, in the end, agree with Bill Craig that genocide is okay as long as God feels like it? […]
Ken, its funny how while I am writing a series of blog posts on the question your refer to you suggest I am silent.
“Matt, how do you know they were mistaken?”
Because I know things like sexual slavery and so on are evil ergo I know that a perfectly good being would not command them.
Do you disagree that we do not know these things are evil?
Do you disagree that a perfectly good being would not command something evil?
“The fact is these people did not think they were mistaken at all – and you cannot prove they were”.
Well, your welcome to think that we cannot prove that a morally perfect being would not command sexual slavery and things like that if you wish.
“Their divine commands are just as valid as yours. They have no objective basis – hence their relativism.”
Only, if you think the claim that claims that a perfectly good being would command sexual slavery is as valid as the claim that he would not command such activity.
Some answers at last;
“Because I know things like sexual slavery and so on are evil ergo I know that a perfectly good being would not command them.
Do you disagree that we do not know these things are evil?”
And how do you know these things are wrong?
The same way I do. You have an objective basis in the nature of our species and the facts of the situation. You are using secular ethics – as you must do in these situations. You cannot rely on divine commands because so many of those commands are contradictory and can be shown wrong or evil by applying secular ethics. You are capable if judging for yourself if these divine commands are right it evil.
But religious demagogues slander secular ethics. They demonise it. Instead they justify their actions using divine commands. Kony does this and his followers, and many others, accept his claims. After all, he must have their god’s protection. (She is the Christian god). How else has he avoided capture (he is being hunted for crimes against humanity)
OK, you have managed to work out these things are right and wrong. But why go on about a “perfectly good being” or a “morally perfect being”?
Surely that idea is superfluous. We don’t need this to apply our secular ethics and decide what is right or wrong. As morally autonomous beings that idea is of absolutely no use to us.
Worse, raising this concept introduces the danger that someone will claim, as does Kony, that there is such a being and this being has produced a divine command that sexual slavery is morally right.
After all, isn’t this how religions have justified sacrifice, slavery, oppression if women, discrimination against homosexuals, apartheid, segregation, denial of national rights and genocide?
Singer is correct when he argues for the killing of disabled infants. Objectively correct.
Ken, I realise that you hate to learn from religious people, but allow me to offer you some learning nonetheless:
“You are using secular ethics”
No. Matt is merely saying that all people have moral intuitions and many or most of them are correct. That’s not “secular ethics.” This is just an issue of moral epistemology – how people know moral facts. It can still be the case – as Matt believes it is – that the cause of moral facts is theological.
And that, Ken, is the different between epistemology and ontology. You’re welcome.
Glenn, I really don’t want to get onto a brawl with all comers on this and hope Matt can develop his argument and justifications himself.
However, I am quite aware that we usually rely on moral intuitions in deciding whether actions are right or wrong. Perfectly normal as most of our brain’s processing occurs below the level of consciousness. These intuitions can be based on evolved instincts but can also incorporate learning and developed argument. There is a dialectical unity between the conscious and sub conscious as well as between intuition and reasoned learning. Just as well as we would not otherwise have made the moral progress we have.
As Matt has demonstrated he is quite capable of making secular judgements on whether an action is right or wrong. It’s just superfluous to bring in this “perfect moral being” and in fact he provides no justification for doing so.
The evil perpetrated by people like Kony and justified as divine commands shows the problems introduced by this “perfect moral being” which can be used to justify anything. The worst form of moral relativism.
Ken wrote “The same way I do. You have an objective basis in the nature of our species and the facts of the situation. You are using secular ethics – as you must do in these situations.”
No I know through moral intuition,
One cannot get a moral conclusion such as “sexual slavery is wrong” merely from premises about the nature of the species or the “facts of the situation”. I certainly know of no valid argument of this sort, and your continually saying one can does not really show anything.
Interesting – you are putting moral intuition over divine command. That is healthy.
You will have to concede, though, though that some religionists don’t. The mother who accepts the divine command to injure or kill her child. The cult leader or priest who uses divine command to justify their sexual predation. Etc.
I commented on intuition above. It is basically the brain operating in auto mode. In more complex situations we must switch to manual mode. And the problem can, of course, be that the manual, “rational”, mode may really be just rationalising. As when people try to explain their intuitions religiously.
But even so you auto, intuition mode, has an objective basis in the empathetic and social wiring of your brain and its processing of the objective facts it encounters. No mythical beings are required to understand that.
One certainly can, and many have, justified the concept that slavery as wrong from the objective facts of our nature and existence. I see no problem at all in that. You claim that you “certainly know of no valid argument of this sort.” Might I suggest either you don’t want to, or have not really applied yourself. And perhaps suffer from the blinkers you wear.
On the other hand religious divine command ethics can be, and has been, used to claim both slavery is wrong, and slavery is right. That apartheid is wrong and apartheid is wrong. That oppression of women and gays is right, and is wrong. Etc.
Moral relativism.
Kenny boy, i love you, your innocence and naivety concerning human nature is touching even beautiful in one of your age. I am jealous. You remind me of myself when i was a teenager before i had experienced any of the world outside the protection of my family. Or maybe of Neville Chamberlain before WW2.
Jeremy that comment is completely inappropriate and irrelevant to our discussion here. Surely it is obvious that an objective basis for morality also implies an objective basis, both in the individual and society (and our evolution) for evil.
I have no illusion – to suggest I do is silly and a cop out.
Ken i had written you a more complete reply but bumped the wrong button and lost it all, i will do so again when i am at a more suitable location.
“Interesting – you are putting moral intuition over divine command.”
Ken, learn to read, or else just get some honesty. Matt said no such thing. It’ the epistemology/ontology distinction. You’d really benefit from taking it into account when you reply. It would save a lot of time.
On the other hand people with non-religious scientific outlooks can, and have, claimed both slavery is wrong, and slavery is right. That apartheid is wrong and apartheid is wrong. That oppression of women and gays is right, and is wrong. Etc.
Relativism.
*waits for the penny to drop*
Glenn, you are allowing your defensiveness to interfere with your comprehension.
1: Of course Matt didn’t say he had elevated intuitions above divine commands. I did. And my conclusion was based on the fact that he relies on his intuitions to make a judgement on whether a reported divine command is real or not. A healthy sign. Hopefully he does this in other situations.
2: Nobody suggests that the non-religious necessarily escape the quagmire of moral relativism. That fact, however, does not distract from the fact that divine command ethics demonstrably results in moral relativism as the examples show.
I certainly don’t claim being non-religious necessarily makes one more moral. That still requires the development of a mature moral autonomy. But escaping from religious divine command ethics does solve one problem.
Ken, I did not elevate intuitions above divine commands, I said we can ascertain what Gods commands are via moral intiution.
Glenn is correct that you are failing to draw the distinction between ontology and epistemology. As I have pointed out a DCT is a theory of moral ontology, its a theory of what right and wrong is it nature. Its not a theory about how we know what is right and wrong.
To use the well worn analogy right and wrong consists of agreement and disagreement respectively with Gods commands. Just as water consists of H20.
If I know that water is h20, then I can determine wether something is H20 by tasting it and seeing if its water.
Similarly If I know that right and wrong consist of divine commands, then if I discover that something is forbidden by God by determining wether its wrong.
It would be silly to say that I am putting my taste before hydrogen and oxgen atoms if I suggest I can discover somethings water by tasting it. Yet thats the same confusion between ontology and epistemology you make.
Ken, I’d like to know why seeing Glenn and I have pointed out to your repeatedly that a DCt is a theory of ontology and not epistemology and I have written several posts explaining this you keep making comments which presuppose it is an epistemological theory?
No Matt, I am not confused as you will see if you note my comments on the auto mode nature of instincts compared with the manual mode nature of intelligently applied moral logic based on objective facts. However you were the one who claimed to judge the veracity of a divine command of Kony’s by reference to your intuitions. Personally I expected you to refer more to manual mode if moral logic. Whatever, the key thing as that, in practice, you don’t rely on evidence of revelation or divine command in your judgement.
But perhaps you could take your analogy further to test that.
As a chemist I always find your H2O analogy confusing (yes I am aware it’s not yours really but you fall back on it a lot).
So perhaps you could extend this analogy and explain how you propose to determine what the structure or chemical composition of water is. You obviously don’t know it is by divine command or revelation, do you? And it may turn out not to be H2O, or characteristically H2O is a naive representation of the actual structure/composition and for practical purposes you need more precision. So it is something you can’t know beforehand – you have to determine . But how?
“Glenn, you are allowing your defensiveness to interfere with your comprehension.”
Hiding behind chidish comments like this doesn’t help anyone, Ken, least of all you.
“Of course Matt didn’t say he had elevated intuitions above divine commands. I did.”
LOL, really. That’s pretty obvious. And you were wrong to state that, for the reason that I explained (namely, the epistemology/ontology distinction). Since you didn’t comment on that reason, I assume you don’t have anything to say about it. Ergo, my criticism remains.
“That fact, however, does not distract from the fact that divine command ethics demonstrably results in moral relativism as the examples show.”
No, the examples don’t show it at all. My counter example used the same logic to “show” that non-religious ethics is commited to relativism – which it clearly is not. Ken, you need to understand that the fact that people do not agree about what an ethical theory implies in practice is not the same as relativism. Disputes between absolutists does not somehow transform them into relativists, after all.
Glenn, the term “non-religious” ethics covers a mutitude of sins – including non-religious divine command ethics (eg the Maoism of the so-called “cultural revolution” in China).
I personally am interested in advancing the concept of objectively- based ethics as I think this counters the problems of relativism and absolutism, as well as divine command relativism.
Ken, I think the conflation I refered to is seen in your comment here “you don’t rely on evidence of revelation or divine command in your judgement.” You note that in this case, I trusted moral intuition over an alleged divine revelation. That’s correct. But that’s different from saying I put intuition over an actual divine command. What I am suggesting is that the intuition gives us reason for thinking the purported revelation is unreliable and so there is no divine command to do the action in question.
But we seem to be making progress a bit. The H20 analogy is not mine it comes from secular meta-ethicists. Who use it to make the same distinctions in secular meta-ethics, it originates from some important issues in philosophy of language.
I’ll try and elaborate it a bit: The analogy is designed to show how epistemological questions are different from ontological ones. We notice that some things in the world are bodies of water. This raises questions. If we were to ask what water is, whats its nature is what it consists of? The best answer, that water is constituted by H20, which is a particular structure of particles and so on.
On the other hand if we ask how we know something is water, we can say we know by taste, sight, etc. One does not need to know anything about H20 or even its existence in many cases to know if something is water. Our ancestors could identify water, drink it, swim in it, cook with it and so on with out knowing anything about H20
The same sort of thing happens in meta-ethics. We notice some things in the world are wrong. This raises questions. . If we were to ask what water is, whats its nature is what it consists of? I believe the best answer is that rightness and wrongness is constituted by agreement and disagreement respectively with Gods commands.
On the other hand if we ask how we know something is wrong , we can say we know by intuitive sense of right and wrong in our conscience and inferences from this. One does not need to know anything about Gods commands or even Gods existence in many cases to know if something is wrong. So in the analogy, our intuitions are analogous to our perceptual senses, water is analogous to wrongness, and divine commands analogous to H20.
Now your questions
So perhaps you could extend this analogy and explain how you propose to determine what the structure or chemical composition of water is. You obviously don’t know it is by divine command or revelation, do you?
Good question, we determine that water is H20 this way, we already have an awareness of water and are familiar with its properties. We also through science learn about atoms, molecules, elements like oxygen and hydrogen and so on and learn what properties these things have. When we ask what the nature of water is, we look for some thing that we can identify with water than will explain the various properties we know it has. H20 best fits the bill, when we look at what we know about hydrogen oxygen and so on and how they relate we find that identifying H20 with water, explains why water has the features it does behaves the way it does better than any other alternative.
An analogous process ours in ethics: we already have an awareness of certain actions being right and wrong, we are aware then of the existence of right and wrong as properties of actions and we are familiar with the properties of rightness and wrongness. In theology we also have developed a picture of God, he is said to have certain properties and commanded certain actions and so on. When we ask what the nature of wrongness is. When we ask what the nature of wrongness is, we look for some thing that we can identify with water than will explain the various properties we know it has. Gods commands best fits the bill, when we look at what properties God is said to have, the kinds of things a being with those properties would prohibit, the kinds of properties a divine command would have we find that identifying his commands with right and wrong, explains why wrongness has the features it does behaves the way it does better than any other alternative.
”And it may turn out not to be H2O, or characteristically H2O is a naive representation of the actual structure/composition and for practical purposes you need more precision.”
Sure as science advances we may learn more about water and H20, and discover we need to alter things. Similarly as we reflect more on God and morality we may come up with deeper understandings which require refinement. Divine command theories have become more refined and nuanced over the last 10 years, and different features of morality have been reflected on and related to these theories.
There is a final point to the analogy, once we have esthablished that water is H20, that fact can enable us to learn more about water and discover facts about it that we did not know before due to our limited knowledge, it also might enable us to answer difficult questions that mere tasting and seeing water cannot. The same can be true for divine commands and wrongness.
Matt, I must stress that this water H2O analogy is really not adequate. In fact it is misleading. Not just because I see water as a chemist but because water, oxygen and hydrogen (and the other constituents) are substances. In contrast actions are behaviors and right or wrong is a judgement. We all have access to judgements we don’t have access to intrinsic qualities like molecular structure.
To illustrate:
A: We know water from experience and use and are aware if it’s properties.
B: We know human actions, behavior, from observation and experience and can be aware of consequences.
But:
A: We don’t need to know anything about the internal, microscopic, intrinsic aspects of water for all normal use. This is of course different for the specialist investigator who attempts to elucidate these deeper aspects. But we used water long before experts came along.
B: In contrast, all normal humans have a strong concept of right and wrong as intrinsic properties or results of actions or behaviors. It’s part of being human (and we think some other animals have similar concepts to some extent).
Why do we have those strong concepts & judgements?
Because we evolved as social, empathetic beings and cannot exist in human society without them. We need to have evolved a moral grammar. To automatically make moral judgements.
So, our morality is more like wetness than molecular structure – something we experience all the time. Hence part of our intuitions.
We understand this as part of the science of morality. No gods are required for this. God hypotheses play absolutely no role in our understanding (and in fact have been a hurdle we needed to overcome before we could really understand morality scientifically. The usual story).
Now I think you probably agree but would say that gods are required to know if our moral judgements are correct. I suspect you define right and wrong according to what you believe your god commands or thinks. (I am aware many Christians probably don’t do it this way, either consciously or unconsciously – my point about our innate need to rationalize.)
But this is where the relativism comes in because it is up to you, your religious leader, the voices in your head, or your interpretation of “holy” scripture to decide for your god what she is thinking or commanding. After all she isn’t sitting there including you in her discussions or commands, is she? (People who claim she is are usually looked at sideways).
I don’t see any way for you to avoid the charge of relativism because in the end you make the decision for your god.
In contrast an objective basis for morality enables one to make moral judgements intelligently and rationally. One can consider the facts and the consequences. One can determine how different actions effect the lives and happiness of others. We use that to judge if an action is right or wrong.
In the end this conscious, intelligent, compassionate consideration enables us to improve our moral intuitions and to approach new problems in a collective way.
While you judged Kony’s revelations using your own intuitions who is to judge if those intuitional decisions were correct? After all most people at different stages intuitively knew slavery was right. Oppression of women and gays correct. Apartheid was right. Etc. But it has been our ability to get beyond a command mode, to recognize violations of human rights, dignity and justice, which has helped us to intellectually work through these problems. Overcoming our intuitive responses in the process. In fact changing our intuitions in the same way that learning to ride a bike produces a change on intuitive abilities.
Now we know oppression of women and gays is wrong. Apartheid, slavery, racism, sexism, etc., are wrong, even evil.
We can work that all out irrespective of any god belief. Believers and non-believers alike, and mostly come to the same conclusions.
And often those judgements are different to the divine command ethical results – eg contraception, condoms to prevent aids, etc.
Now, Glenn is of course correct when he points out that non-believers can be just as prone to relativism as believers. I think this is because confirmation bias, subjective attitudes (them vs us) and material interests can dominate our judgements, even when consciously made (our innate desire to rationalize).
But a collective, pluralist, discussion and decision on moral questions, particularly the new ones we confront as a species, is the solution. Our moral judgements in such cases are more likely to be correct, providing the best recognition and guarantee of the human rights, dignity and happiness of us all.
No gods come in to this – thankfully. Because just look at the moral misery they have been used to justify in the past.
“I personally am interested in advancing the concept of objectively- based ethics”
That’s great Ken. Looking forward to your defence of Divine Command Ethics!
No secular ethics need to come in to this – thankfully. Because just look at the moral misery they have been used to justify in the past. It does not.
Ken, please make an effort to understand this, so you will come across as possibly slighly willing to be fair: The fact that people who hold to some variety of a specific moral theory reach different moral conclusions does not make that theory a species of relativism.
Glenn – your comment didn’t make any sense to me.
But as for the last bit. I am not concerned with theories. Nor is the person in the street, the do-gooder or the mass murderer. The fact is that one can use a god to justify any moral command. Just as Kony does. One can claim visions, voices, scripture (very easy) and religious leaders to justify anything.
Justification and rationalisation is our species’ default mode – as you will see around here.
Pure relativism.
Ok bets are on over when Glenn and Ken are going to hook up. Currently in favour of it at $2.34.
Richard P. Define “hook-up.”
Ken –
You seem to be assuming that it is impossible for theists to provide an objective basis for morality if part of their moral theory includes divine commands (as the basis of moral value, and the way we know some moral values). According to you, there is no way of knowing who’s revelation is true, which opens the door to whackos drowning their children “because God told them so,” etc.
But theists surely can put some moral limits on what a perfectly good God could possibly command, and we arrive at these limits the same as atheists: moral intuition. You have not shown that theists cannot develop good, workable, objective moral criteria that would rightly condemn whackos who claim that God told them to do horrible action X. Certainly my theistic moral system would enable me to make such objective judgments, since I believe we can establish objective moral limits as to what perfect goodness entails and rules out.
Sure, any whacko theist could CLAIM that “God” told them to do horrible action X and that it is therefore right, but equally scary, any whacko non-theist could CLAIM that horrible action X is right for any old reason – because “human reason” says so, because some authority figure told them so, etc. Anybody can CLAIM that something is right for any old reason; *non-theists not excluded.*
Your objection here only goes through if we accept voluntarism, the meta-ethical view that God can command literally anything and that it would thereby be moral. But the vast majority of theists deny this, and they argue that there are indeed such things as necessary moral truths, that we can intuit them apart from knowing about God, and that we can then rule out certain actions as impossible for a perfectly good God to command.
So your “there is no way to know” objection really only goes through if theists cannot develop a workable, objective way of judging certain divine commands as impossibly coming from a perfectly good God. And you have not shown this. Anyone, theist or non-theist, can claim any old action to be moral on the basis of any irrational justification they want (and there are plenty available to non-theists), but that does nothing to undermine the objectivity of moral values, or the ability of theists to discern moral value and apply them to purported divine commands.
Kyle – you misrepresent me.
I believe that many theists do use an objective basis for their morality. Just as well as you would all be flying planes into buildings otherwise.
However, not all will admit that or even be conscious of that. Anyone that argues a god is necessary for their morality is either ignorant of the sources of morality or is rationalising.
You are welcome to put whatever limits you want on your god. after all it is an invention of your mind, not mine.
You admit “we arrive at these limits the same as atheists: moral intuition.” Good. But I will go further and point out that our intuitions in the past permitted slavery, racism, suppression of women and homosexuals, etc. Now they don’t (for most of us). In other words our intuitions have evolved.
Our intuitions change as a result of this rational learning in the same way we learn to ride a bike or a language.
I like the camera metaphor. We use our intuitions when we are on “auto” and we intelligently use logic and evidence to develop our moral response when we are on “manual.”
In the end we have to be careful of intuitions and try to ensure an intelligent, pluralist, rational discussion of issues. This is how we can adopt to new phenomena (and science is certainly presenting us with some these days).
It is also true that one’s intuitions can be manipulated and distorted by a “sheltered” upbringing. Children brought up in religious cults can have real difficult developing their own moral autonomy. And their intuitions may lead them to hate homosexuals and atheists, have a sexist racist attitude and reject well established scientific knowledge on the age of the earth and the evolution of life.
“Anyone that argues a god is necessary for their morality is either ignorant of the sources of morality or is rationalising.”
Here you are confounding moral ontology with moral epistemology, the order of being and the order of knowing. I believe we can *know* many moral truths without believing in God, but I would argue that God is the only reasonable ontological *foundation* for morality. The best the atheist can do in my opinion to find an ontological foundation for morality is to embrace Platonism, which is not without its problems. Objective moral obligation is hard to ground without God, in my view – although again, I do believe one can believe in and practice objective moral value without God. I just think it is extremely difficult to give a convincing, objective account of these values apart from God.
Of course, I agree that intuitions develop and sharpen over time, and I agree that they can be warped in those who are brainwashed or sheltered (religious or nonreligious). I would dispute the notion that science really has anything to say about morality, however. Science deals with the empirical, not the moral. The most science can help us with is helping us see what behaviors tend to human happiness (in some cases). Science can’t tell us that human happiness is a good that we ought to promote.
Theistically based, Christian values, too, have been on the whole extremely beneficial to human society. Yes there are heinous examples of abuse, just as there are in atheist morality. But the ethics of Jesus have been a boon on mankind on the whole.
Ken: “Glenn – your comment didn’t make any sense to me.”
Oh dear. Nevermind.
“The fact is that one can use a god to justify any moral command.”
LOL, Ken are you delibrately failing to understand? One can use secular ethics to justify any moral act. So where are we now?
Glenn, what is this strange “secular ethics” you talk about?
You may have noticed (or should have if you have paid attention) that I have been arguing the case for objectively-based (facts and evidence) ethics. It is secular in that it is independent of religion, open to and practiced by people of all or no religions. Concerned with the real world.
However I think you may be using “secular” in a different manner. It happens.
One cannot properly use facts and evidence to support any action. It is not a command ethics.
No Kyle, you are the one confounding, or attempting to. And I can see why. You want to find a place for your god. I don’t have that requirement not accepting those sort of myths.
You have an opinion about atheists – I can assure you it is wrong. It doesn’t describe me. I have at length argued the case for an objectively-based morality with no god requirement. Instead of telling me what I am supposed to think why not consider my arguments and respond to them if necessary.
Science does not have to tell us that human happiness us a good we should promote or that human pain and misery is a wrong we should prevent. People can work that out for themselves. That judgement is what we use the words right and wrong for.
Only a god belief us so twisted as to somehow disconnect right and wrong, good and bad, from human happiness or misery. Only religion is so evil as to suggest that something causing human misery could not be wrong.
You can stuff your “ontological foundation” in the dustbin of history. We are surely beyond such evil.
Of course Christians and non-Christians have had and still have common values which are extreme beneficial to humanity.
They just are not “theistically based” – even though some Christians may have the arrogant delusion that they are.
Funny how Craig responded to Hitchen’s challenge to name one positive moral value possessed by Christians but not atheists. His answer – tithing. Bloody shows you doesn’t it.
Ken –
You are welcome to try to argue for a sound objective grounding for moral value as an atheist – I have just never been persuaded by such accounts. I’m sure you still believe in objective moral values, and I’m sure you still practice it, (neither of which I denied), but I doubt that there can ever be a sound atheistic, ontological foundation for them. I’m not telling you what to think, or telling you that you don’t (or shouldn’t) believe in objective moral values, I’m simply letting you know that from my perspective, atheists have not succeeded in providing a convincing meta-ethical grounding for them.
At any rate, I can see that your antipathy for religion runs deep, so much so that you imperceptibly run together three distinct claims: (1) We can know many moral truths apart from believing in God or discerning God’s commands, (2) We can have a sound ontological foundation of moral truths apart from God, and (3) We can be moral apart from God. I agree with (1) and (3), contrary to what you implied. I have serious doubts about (2).
It is also no more arrogant to argue for a theistic grounding for ethics than an atheistic one. It WOULD be arrogant to argue that only theists know anything about morality, but few Christian theologians have taken that tack.
Ken, you just aren’t aware of how you’re mirror-imagine a divine command theorist’s reponse. Here we go again:
People who believe in “objectively-based (facts and evidence) ethics” arrive at different moral conclusions from each other. Therefore it’s relativism.
PS: If you say “But THAT doesn’t make it relativism,” stop and think. You just defended divine command ethics against your ridiculous charge of relativism.
PPS: You are losing your memory when you say “what are these ‘secular ethics’.” On October 14 in this thread you defended “These secular ethics.” Remember? No, I thought not…
Glenn, I was asking you what you meant by secular ethics. No answer. I can draw my own conclusions from that.
I am quite aware I have used that term but have since been stressing objectively based ethics as a more precise description of where I am coming from. Especially as some people here seem to interpret that term in a very derogatory way.
“Secular” seems to be a dirty word around here – something I find strange as it is inclusive.
Kyle you are again wrong to claim that I believe in
“objective moral values,” and that I “practice” them. I don’t think there are any such things.
You have not comprehended my arguments to make that claim.
I am arguing for objectively based moral values. That our moral arguments and decisions are based on facts and evidence.
Big difference which you seem to have a blockage in understanding. I think your god is getting in the way.
[…] God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part I Kant I mentioned Phillip Quinn’s observation that theists can face a particular dilemma, “[I]t seems […]
Ken,
You said:
“Kyle you are again wrong to claim that I believe in “objective moral values,” and that I “practice” them. I don’t think there are any such things…I am arguing for objectively based moral values. That our moral arguments and decisions are based on facts and evidence.”
So then you do not believe we can say that something is objectively morally wrong or right? We cannot say that the Holocaust was objectively wrong? That’s what it means to believe in objective moral values. I’m uncertain as to what you believe by “objectively BASED” moral values based on “facts and evidence.”
The only thing “facts and evidence” can tell us is what tends to human happiness. (in some instances) If you want to hold the further belief that it is RIGHT to promote human happiness, you logically need to believe in objective moral values, which cannot logically be inferred from empirical facts. Sharpening of moral intuitions come about when our consciences are piqued, and our conscience goes beyond what empirical sense could ever tell us.
“I think your god is getting in the way.”
You certainly are fond of the ad hominem.
Kyle,
Of course we can say “the holocaust was wrong.” But have a look at that sentence.
Chop off the first 2 words – we get “was wrong.” That is meaningless because it doesn’t have any objective existing facts to go with it.. However an intelligent, conscious, empathetic, social being will recognise the word “wrong.” In doing so she will probably unconsciously be doing a thought experiment, actually remembering or recognising specific situations she considers wrong. I suspect the patterns of activation in her brain would be very similar to those for the same person considering the original, whole sentence.
Now remove the last two words. We have nothing. There is no conscious, empathetic, etc., being making a judgment.
So without the objectively existing facts being judged or the objectively existing conscious, sentient, empathetic, social, intelligent being to do the judging there is nothing.
We can also do the thought experiment – taking a normal person who has never heard of the holocaust, has not learned that history, etc. Now we give her some facts. We explain the facts of the holocaust in a neutral, non-judgemental, way. I am sure this person will judge the holocaust to be wrong. And she does so because:
1: She considered factual information.
2: She is a sentient, empathetic, conscious, intelligent social being.
Neither the word holocaust or wrong exists objectively divorced from events, objects, people and conscious contemplation of these people.
So our moral decisions are objectively based. They don’t exist independently of reality. They are based on the facts of the situation and the facts of our existence.
If you can’t see that then your god is getting in the way. I am not being silly, just factual. You are trying to find a place for your god when that is just not required.
Look everyone needs to get over trying to wow an atheist into believing something no better than offering a forced mind tricked truth than a understood.If god’s children thought we all needed to be directed then he would have really appointed priests instead it was a level self given by and for man……always remember god wants you to think and not let the others do it.It’s called earning.For god,you life and wisdom
Chop off the first 2 words – we get “was wrong.” That is meaningless because it doesn’t have any objective existing facts to go with it..
So essentially the claim the holocaust was wrong is not true.
A statement is true only if it corresponds to the facts.
What’s your point Matt?
“Chop off the first 2 words – we get “was wrong.” That is meaningless because it doesn’t have any objective existing facts to go with it.. However an intelligent, conscious, empathetic, social being will recognise the word “wrong.””
“So without the objectively existing facts being judged or the objectively existing conscious, sentient, empathetic, social, intelligent being to do the judging there is nothing.”
Your position, then, it that there are not objective moral values, just situations in which “intelligent, conscious, empathetic, social beings” THINK something is wrong. This judgment is based on the objective facts of the situation.
Three things here: (1) moral judgments, even if they are not objective, cannot be inferred from the “facts of the situation” alone. They arise from a combination of empirical judgments and non-empirical moral intuition. (2) on this view, the Holocaust actually wasn’t objectively wrong. All we can say is that most, or all “intelligent, compassionate” agents would THINK it is wrong.
And (3), I think it’s quite clear at this point that there actually IS a necessary and very important place for God in ethical theory – because without him, the Holocaust was not objectively wrong, and I think we want to be able to affirm that!! I find that simply unconscionable, and it reveals how atheism in the end cannot uphold objective morality at all, but just subjective morality, which is not enough.
Any ethical theory that prevents us from saying the Holocaust was objectively wrong (morally speaking) is inadequate, to put it mildly. It does not surprise me that you think God is unnecessary if you think THIS is unnecessary. I maintain instead that the Holocaust was morally wrong, and that we have a duty to punish those who perpetrate such crimes and that we ought to refrain from them ourselves. Your view does not enable us to say either of these things, for they both presuppose objective morality and objective moral obligation.
It seems, if anything, that your godlessness is getting in the way. 😉
Kyle – I don’t think you have expressed that well. WTF is an “empirical moral judgement”?
I would rephrase your 1:
Moral judgments are based on empirical information, our moral intuitions and (sometimes) rational considerations of the empirical information. There is a dialectical unity between the rational conscious consideration and the unconscious intuitional reaction. Consequently our intuitions are capable of changing over time.
Judgments of right and wrong are of course made by the conscious agent – how else could they be made – by no-one in a vacuum?
You do nothing to support your claim that “it’s quite clear at this point that there actually IS a necessary and very important place for God in ethical theory”. There is no more place for gods in ethical theory than there is in physics, chemistry or accountancy. In fact dragging god ideas into these considerations only confuses understanding.
As an intelligent, sentient, conscious, empathetic and social being I have no trouble considering the facts of the holocaust and concluding it was wrong – based on my nature and the objective facts. This may well involve mainly an intutional response in my case.
However, consider the introduction of god ideas. Especially common catholic ideas in Germany and Europe at the time. The prejudice and hatred towards the Jews as the Jesus killers, etc. Intuitionally many Germans probably had little problem finding that the holocaust, or what they saw of it, was not wrong. That would have been the god-given objective morality view. Clearly I would have judged them wrong.
Now some of those Christian Germans may have been able to overcome their religious and social training. Be able to look past the racism and religious hatred and recognize the Jews (Russians, Poles, Homosexuals, Atheists and Communist victims of the holocaust) as human. Their moral logic may have helped them overcome the perversion of their moral intuitions.
The problem with introduction of god ideas is that there is nothing rational or logical to balance problems with intuition. God ideas/commands are, anyway, often just the prejudices of the person given a divine excuse. In any even they are not rational or evidence based.
God justifications end up promoting a relativist moral approach rather than and objectivity based moral approach.
I contend that many god ideas would have been used to justify what went on in Germany. And, sure non-religious prejudices would have also.
But anyone properly considering the objective facts and able to respond intelligently and empathetically would have no problem judging the holocaust wrong.
the atheists did not fare better when getting any breakthroughs with their ideas. they didn’t think outside the box when racism was considered normal discourse. David Hume thought blacks were inferior in his day and Darwin was still a chauvinist in treating blacks as second class free citizens even though he supported abolition. Rationality is simply a box labelled official from all the other boxes, but does not contain any weight to trounce other boxes of thought. But Ken is blind to the fact that reason and objectivism can lead to destructive practices and actions that lead to mass slaughter for the sake of expediting an ideology that takes these two ideas and molds them into making official stories to peddle to the public as a way of asserting their right to their bodies for life or death.
That is why post-modernism came about against modernistic a buses. Both philosophies consider religion as a fringe obscurantist idea to be either exploited or dissected, sounds like your groupies Ken. See even non-believing fundies like you fight amongst themselves on who gets to define a generation, what fucking hypocrisy!
What’s your point, Alvin?
Kyle,
Do you think that God’s prescence in morality would be analogous to a parent teaching a child how to share, instead of a laissez-faire approach where the child remains ignorant and would instead let instinct guide their actions into becoming selfish brats in the future? I’ve heard sociological studies that children without any moral guidance from parents in the developing years would grow up bad, this is often used as evidence to prove the fallen nature of humanity vs. tabula rasa theories proposed during the enlightenment, is there any merits to do this Kyle? Matt?
Well there are numerous points Ken that your long winded sermons against theism haven’t addressed. Matt stated it well in the OP:
Human moral intuitions and judgements are fallible and can err. So in many instances I am inclined to think that the sceptical worries people raise to conclude that theological beliefs are uncertain apply also to moral beliefs. To appeal to these concerns, so as to claim that belief about God’s will is less certain than moral beliefs, is to engage in special pleading.
Ken
The assertion rape is wrong, is a judgement that some action in the world (rape) has a certain property (wrongness). Its true if the action actually has that property. If the action does not have this property the claim is false.
The assertion, my cup is full of water, is a judgement that some thing in the world ( my cup) is full of a certain property ( water). It’s true if the cup actually is full of water and false if its not.
So if you claim there is no objectively existing property wrongness. The claim rape is wrong is false. Just as the claim the cup is full of water would be false if there was no existing property of water.
In the case of water we can give a plausible naturalistic account of what water is, we can say its H20 a combination of certain physical particles.
The issue for moral judgements then is wether you can give a plausible naturalistic account of what wrongness is, in otherwords you can provide an adequate explanation of wrongness in terms of physical particles or something like that.
All you have said is that humans have evolved a capacity on the basis of empathy to make moral judgements. That’s true, but it says nothing about wether those judgements are true or false. For that to be the case you need to provide an adequate account of what moral properties are.
And by adequate I mean an account that explains the nature of morality better, than a divine command theory or some other theistic theory can.
Matt wrote: So if you claim there is no objectively existing property wrongness. The claim rape is wrong is false. Just as the claim the cup is full of water would be false if there was no existing property of water.
I agree with Matt’s assertion. Rape can no more be objectively considered as wrong than the cannibalism inflicted by a female red back spider on a male during mating.
Anytime we use the terms right and wrong we are making a subjective judgment based on our evolved and learned humanity. You can’t have a value without a valuer. What seems to escape divine command theorists is that all they are positing is replacing subjective human judgment with the subjective whim of their supposed deity. Am I missing something here?
TAM wrote You can’t have a value without a valuer.What seems to escape divine command theorists is that all they are positing is replacing subjective human judgment with the subjective whim of their supposed deity. Am I missing something here?
In many respects you are capturing the issue well, the central intuition is that moral properties such as right and wrong, make demands on people, they are requirements and prescriptions, and this is best understood in terms of requirements or prescriptions.
The problem is that they can’t plausibly be requirements made on others by humans or societies, this is because we recognise that societies and people often prescribe or require horrendous immoral things. So moral properties cannot be identified with human prescriptions.
Divine commands however fit the bill much more adequately, because God is understand a omnscient, rational, loving, just, etc and so one can identify right and wrong with his commands.
Moreover this explains the ‘objectivity’ of wrongness, in that we debate moral issues, we consider some people (i.e. Hitler) to be mistaken, we place moral claims in premises of arguments and so on all of which suggest these things are true or false independently of what we think.
Ken’s argument seems to be that there is no moral properties, moral claims are not true . We simply have evolved to make such judgements about certain behavour. On this view morality is like how athiests see religion, people have evolved to think there are gods but in reality there are none such claims are all false.
Ropata, I explain something simply and it ends up “long winded” – or that is how you see it. Even so it doesn’t seem to penetrate your skull, does it?
I have explained at length how human intuitions and judgements are not always “correct.” How could it be otherwise?
That is why intuitions have in the past supported slavery, hatred of homosexuals, discrimination against women, etc. As our species has matured intellectually we have come to consider these attitudes more thoroughly, using the objective evidence of the behaviours, and of our nature, and we have learned. Part of the learning is upgrading of our intuitions.
An important part of that upgrading has been leaning the falsehood of arguments of divine justification of such abhorrent behaviour. The divine commanders attempt to prevent such upgrades – that is why religious morality always lags behind and tends to be reactionary and conservative.
Matt – really you should forget about water – it gets you into all sorts of stupid problems.
We may have a concept of water today because we exist and water exists. However, if it were possible for a human consciousness to have existed long ago at the time of the first generation of stars it would have had no concept of water because water did not, could not, exist. (mind you it would have some other fascinating concepts).
And of course a human consciousness could not exist then because one could not exist when there was only hydrogen, helium and a bit of lithium around. The material required for consciousness didn’t exist.
There was no objective existence of water or the concept of water.
We judge that rape is wrong. This judgment is based on the facts of rape and on the nature of our being. As TAM points out the normal female red back spider does not judge cannibalism is wrong. Are you suggesting that this behavioiur intrinsic to the survival of that species has the property of wrongness? Just because our species today judges cannibalism “wrong.”?
If humans did not exist and there was no human consciousness then human rape could not exist, we could not judge rape as right or wrong. There would not be the objective existence of these concepts.
No Matt – I did not say (as you claim) that “humans have evolved a capacity on the basis of empathy to make moral judgements.”
I said that as a social, empathetic, intelligent, sentient and conscious species we can make such judgement. These factors are all interrelated. “Empathy” can relate to the linking of our sensory, perception and motor regions in the brain, to the existence of “mirror neurons,” etc. The social nature of our existence has meant inevitable evolutionary changes in the brain. The evolution of our larger brain has resulted in self awareness, consciousness, ability to reason and intelligence. Underlying all this is our sentience – the fact that we feel and live.
So we are capable of making judgments about our situation, our behaviour and the behaviour of others. In fact this ability is part of our nature and required for our existence.
And we can describe these judgements as “correct” or “mistaken” because we base them on the objective facts of the situation considered. We can evaluate them by reconsidering the facts and the objective results of our judgements.
That is how we judge the nature of water – surely. We used to think it was HO. As we progressed we were able to come to the conclusion it was actually H2O. Progressing further we recognise that is too simple (it doesn’t describe the objective facts like floating ice) so we come up with an extended structure, hydrogen bonding etc.
All the time we are changing our judgement according to the facts. The facts exist objectively – not in our head. Our models are only imperfect reflections of reality.
And surely our moral progress has been like that. We have made moral progress because as social beings we have been able to collectively consider situations. Recognise the objective facts (and that degree of recognition has improved with time) and make judgement in accord with our species social nature.
Of course that progress is not uniform and it is particularly inhibited by ideologies. Especially ideologies which are inhuman, that promote differences, racism, sexual and gender discrimination, etc. So there is a constant battle between and objectively based ethics and an ideology based one. (And I agree that ideology also takes advantage of human intuitions – usually negatively).
Imagine trying to make judgments about the intrinsic nature of water without considering the facts of water and its properties. That is the same as making moral judgments without considering the objective facts (or using our own nature). In other words accepting divine commands.
Bound to be wrong and anti-human.
Matt, I’ll parrot Ken’s question: Do divine commands assist in telling us whether the sexual cannibalism of the red back spider is wrong?
Using the Holocaust as an example, was it wrong for Hitler to have gassed a Jewish victim if we knew with certainty that the victim would have gone on to become a mass murderer or pedophile? Would it be wrong to go back in time and kill Hitler as a child?
I don’t see how divine commands can assist us in making moral decisions. Pick your moral quandry. How about abortion? [I confess that I am not a big fan of abortion but then again who is?] Does your divine commander say whether abortion is permissible in the case of rape or to save the life of the mother? How about euthanasia? Is it ok to kill someone trapped under a burning car if they ask you and you know there is no way to rescue them before they burn to death? No doubt you are familiar with the trolley cases – does your divine command theory assist in those cases?
If a divine commander cannot assist us in making moral decisions, who cares whether the moral properties originate with him/her/it or naturally? Just wondering.
Matt – I really find your comment childish:
“The problem is that they can’t plausibly be requirements made on others by humans or societies, this is because we recognise that societies and people often prescribe or require horrendous immoral things. So moral properties cannot be identified with human prescriptions.
Divine commands however fit the bill much more adequately, because God is understand a omniscient, rational, loving, just, etc and so one can identify right and wrong with his commands. “
The fact is that we do make moral “requirements or prescriptions” on each other. It’s the nature of our species. We have evolved to do so – if we hadn’t we would not be as we are.
Yes – societies and people have made horrendous demands – and very often used religious arguments, god’s demands, to justify them and to mobolise armies to carry them out. Its the “beauty” of command ethics to despots, kings and religious leaders. Morality becomes completely divorced from reality and can be perverted.
Part of the justification, the commands, the divorce from reality is to invent gods that are “omniscient, rational, loving, just, etc”
The morality of our species has improved as we have broken away from command ethics and built our ethics on the reality of the world. The objective facts of situations and the nature of humanity.
Alongside such a humane approach to ethics you guys are at a real loss to explain how you received your commands. You have trouble working out which ones to believe (this is the whole message from your articles – you just don’t know what to believe so say go with your intuitions, choose the middle path. That is pathetic.
I am sure the wired satire is far more accurate:
“Everybody knows that morality is whatever God says. And God says, whatever me, my best friends, and my hierarchical coalition say that God says.”
Atheism is lost without Christian-based morals to provide a compass. Yes morality has evolved over the millennia SINCE CHRIST. Yes some of his teachings are not unique but the man Himself shattered the concept of morality based on laws and regulation – – and demonstrated the way of grace and love. Perhaps there is an “objective” ultimate morality – – if so it was embodied by Christ, not some legal formulation.
ropata, that last comment is priceless. It belies both an ignorance of history and the correlation/causation fallacy.
As far as the suggestion that Atheism is lost without Christian-based morals to provide a compass, I don’t need any divine commander to order me to be good in order to compel me to do good. I also don’t need to believe that Jesus was a god-man zombie in order to agree with many of the teachings attributed to him.
TAM I’m glad you enjoyed my comment and that you agree with Jesus’ moral example. I doubt that’s in the atheist instruction manual! Nietzsche more accurately expressed the philosophical implications of no ultimate morality: the strong should crush the weak
TAM to claim someone is ignorant of history is not helpful, perhaps you should actually pinpoint the error and correct it. Are you trying to say that Jesus had NO impact on human morality? (if so what are you protesting!? )
And this ethical viewpoint of yours Ken is nothing more constructed and valid as pro-government Chinese supporters who think that China’s government is doing the right thing by polluting the environment for the purpose of speeding up industrialization. It may work in the western hemisphere, but all this talk of liberalism and human rights does not jive well on countries far east and middle where modes of government are junta, commie or islamic. Do not expect them to change their ways, simply because the westerners are all pushing the gospel of democracy in their faces. You can force them if you go to war against them like in Iraq or Afghanistan, but again its just secular theodicy justifying bombing and killing a few to save the many
Another thing.. our nature as species typifies us as janus-faced. on one side, experts say we are a savage race (adler, freud, de sade, schoepenhauer) vs us as a noble race (rousseau) You cannot absolutely say that just because we have cognition, reason and intelligence, we ought to behave ethically. Its toothless, naive and fits only one of the options available to a human being. you have to take the opinions of anti-humanistic, counter-enlightenment philosophers to complete the picture that as humans we can be amoralistic (de sade) we have to force ourselves to take challenges, be aggressive, create our own meaning at the expense of the weak-willed against liberal egalitarian sentiments (Nietzsche)
In other words, whatever options that can sustain my survival and preserve my line whether life-preserving or destroying. I will take and damn the other guy.
Matt is also right in pointing out that societal judgements and pop-group moralities does not warrant actions to be right or wrong. In fact, some societies considered evil can be successful in projecting their power and perpetuating their existence if not for a few decisional blunders that anybody can make. Some historians have said that Nazi Germany would have won the war, if it were not for Hitler’s miscalculations. Germany at that time had an efficient war machine, good tacticians, lots of living space and captured resources to conquer most of Europe and would have seriously challenged the US entry to the war, if Hitler had made the right decisions.
This dissproves the fact that only secular democratic states with humanistic ethics can be winners.
So Ken and TAM, you and your ilk is just one god out of many gods of ethical thought fighting for the many niches of human civilization. the only difference is that your ragnarok is pointless and meaningless, because in the end there is no balder vindicating a winner, its only one huge red sun with everyone frying on this planet.
I take it that Alvin is some sort of pessemesstic nihilist.
Is there a problem with that Richard P? I was just describing the hard facts of reality vs humanistic fantasy
Alvin, you obviously are going to keep your own delusions about this morality game. That however doesn’t change reality. The fact is that many people, me included, can have a very successful moral outlook on the basis of objective facts and the nature of our humanity.
You can rant and eave, express your hatred for us, but that doesn’t change reality.
You are correct that the facts don’t necessarily mean individuals behave ethically. That is also very true of your divine command ethics. Very much so.
This doesn’t change the fact that we can determine an ethical position from the facts and live that way.
OK Matt is critical of my position. But stand back and look at his. He acknowledges that he has to check in with his moral intuitions before accepting his divine commands. He then goes on to say that is not reliable. So he is lost. Neither his intuitions or divine commands are reliable to him. I think that is pathetic. He doesn’t bother to dig any deeper. I guess because rational consideration would undermine his foundations.
I agree that moral decisions may be difficult in some complex situations. But clearly divine commands are also useless here. My attitude is that as we live in a pluralist society it is necessary to have a wide, democratic and rational debate on the facts and possible reactions.
God ideas are absolutely useless in such considerations.
So specifically Ken, which of the 10 commandments are useless, and what of Christs teaching do you find useless or disagree with?
OK Matt is critical of my position. But stand back and look at his. He acknowledges that he has to check in with his moral intuitions before accepting his divine commands. He then goes on to say that is not reliable. So he is lost. Neither his intuitions or divine commands are reliable to him.
Once again Ken misrepresents the position of those he criticises
I think that is pathetic. He doesn’t bother to dig any deeper. I guess because rational consideration would undermine his foundations.
And then engages in ad hominen attacks
But does not actually address the criticisms raised against his position.
Jeremy, when it comes to morals all commands are dangerous. A mature human acts autonomously and their morality is internally integrated – not determined by an outside command.
Similarly, as a mature person I don’t rely on the teachings of others – especially someone from several thousand years ago whose teachings are rather vague and contradictory. Even if only from the Chinese whispers of history.
Like most people I am quite capable of recognising others as complex people and am able to appreciate the positive sides and avoid their negative sides.
No, I have never seen Christ as a postive moral source – nor have I picked up anything morally positive from the childhood years of indoctrination by Sunday School teachers etc. The strongest message I can remember getting from them is that the pavements of heaven are made with gold!
Jeremy – morality does not derive from religion or Christ. Surely you can realise that some of our most moral people are not believers?
Matt – you accuse me of misrepresentation and ad hominen attacks. Yet you do absolutely nothing to provide evidence to undermine my criticisms of your position.
So I stand by my claims that:
You are lost. Neither your intuitions or divine commands are reliable to you.
You don’t bother to dig any deeper. I guess because rational consideration would undermine the foundations of your position.
Actually Ken, I provided citations from your previous comments where you both misrepresented me and also engaged in ad hominen argumentation. So the claim I provided no evidence is false isn’t it.
You seem to think repeating misrepresentations validates them, it doesn’t.
Ken
You didnt answer the questions.
I’m left wondering if you even know enough about the subject to comment.
So i will ask again, which of the following is offensive?
you shall not kill
you shall not lie
you shall not steal
you shall not committ adultery
or how about
love your neighbour as yourself
as a very small sample
Matt – I don’t see any “citations” (whatever you mean by that). You left things at a confusing state – deciding that both divine commands and moral intuitions were unreliable. And you didn’t dig any deeper. It is possible to, you know.
Jeremy – I did answer – although you obviously don’t like my answers.
All commandments are useless – even dangerous. I think people should be morally autonomous. Far safer.
And I don’t idolise anyone or their teachings. Most significant people will have positive and negative views. I take on board what I can – but I am not a sycophant. I don’t follow any ism or anity. I am my own person.
Actually Ken you said “all commands are dangerous” and that you “didnt see Christ as a positive moral source”, you are quite right i dont like you responses but they dont constitute answers to the questions. More correctly they are evasions.
Anyway given your response i must take it you have no problem with killing lying stealing or adultery [ if commands against them are dangerous] and you feel no need to treat your neighbour as yourself [given that Christ is not a positive moral source].
I suspect you are far more dangerous than i am, or ever will be. I wonder whether i could trust you about anything even the comments you publish here.
Moral autonomy in your case seems to be an excuse to avoid any moral standards that you might be measured against or held accountable to.
Very scarey Ken.
Ken
We all have God-given free will. We all are imperfect beings. It is in our nature to worship something; that is why ideologies proliferate. There are always a few independent thinkers, and you are clearly one such. But people need moral guidance, from childhood: “we all like sheep have gone astray”.
The commands of God are not burdensome – in fact Jesus said “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ”
There is a tension of truths here : one of the prophets wrote “obedience is better than sacrifice”; but God doesn’t want a bunch of servile automatons, in the words of Christ, “I have no longer called you servants, but I call you friends”. This world allows a lot of scope for human choice, for good or ill. God wants humans to “act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God”, but the whole reason for the advent of Christ was because we CANNOT meet even this simple requirement.
Along with free will we have moral intuition, conscience, reasoning, empathy etc. This all comes from God. For a Christian the Scriptures resonate with the heart, and challenge our moral failings. (Check Proverbs for some timeless wisdom!)
It might seem easier to follow your example, and do whatever the hell I felt like, without regards to consequence and ignoring the Creator, but to me that is not a rational or balanced approach to life.
Ken you write“Matt – I don’t see any “citations” (whatever you mean by that).”Actually, if you read the comment again and note the citations from yourself in italics, you’ll see I cited exactly where you misrpresented my position and also where you engaged in ad hominem argumentation.
“You left things at a confusing state – deciding that both divine commands and moral intuitions were unreliable. And you didn’t dig any deeper. It is possible to, you know.” Actually I said neither, I never said Gods commands were unreliable ( i did say the opposite) nor did I say our intiutions are unreliable ( in fact I said the opposite) what I did say was that our intuitions about right and wrong are fallible.
“All commandments are useless – even dangerous. I think people should be morally autonomous. Far safer.”
Well the concept of autonomy actually means self law, so it involves commandments. But putting that aside, your insinuating here that accepting divine commands is incompatible with autonomy, now I pointed you earlier to several articles which rebut this charge, you at the time claimed you accepted the compatibility of divine commands and autonomy.
Jeremy, that comment is just childish.
What is it that drives you people to think bad of others, misrepresent them and condemn?
Oh, I see. It somehow makes you feel better about yourself!
Matt, you are strange. You “prove”your silly misrepresentations of me by simply reciting my words – without any justification for your interpretation. Silly!
So I now have to interpret you as saying that “divine” commands are reliable? That believers should accept the abhorrent biblical commands as more reliable than their own moral intuitions and logic?
So in fact you were being “decisive?” That’s even worse than I thought. I now see why they are calling it the “Flannagan Delusion.”
Ken, I see so instead of admitting you made a mistake your response is to call me silly, deluded, misrepresent me again. Thanks for providing further proof.
Actually I never said Gods commands are unreliable, God being perfectly good and omniscient does not make mistakes and command abhorrent things as you contend. I actually pointed this out in my earlier posts on the topic.
The issue here is not about what God actually commands its about claims that God has commanded some action. Claiming God has commanded X is not the same thing as God actually commanding X. A person who knows the difference between epistemology and ontology is aware of this.
My contention above, is that our moral intiutions are reliable, hence one cannot rationally accept claims that God issued a set of commands that depart to drastically and radically from what we intiutively think is right and wrong.
On the other hand although our intiitions are not infallible, its to be expected that what God actually commanded would conflict with our intiutions to some extent and so its not necessarily irrational to accept claims that God issued commands that depart from our intuitions to some extent.
I find it interesting that some skeptics deny this, apparently they think that if God existed he would never disagree with the morals of 21st century western liberals, these mores are apparently infallible and the intiutions of liberals can never ever be mistaken. Hence what we really have is not skepticism but moral dogmaticism.
“What is it that drives you people to think bad of others, misrepresent them and condemn?”
The irony here really hurts.
Matt, I use the word “silly” because you are being silly to think citing my comments is sufficient to prove your unwarranted claims. (The sensible thing is to take what i see as honest comments and treat them accordingly. Not avoid them by defensively imagining motives).
It’s also silly to play with words like:
Reliable – dependable, able to be trusted.
Infallible – not liable to error, certain, sure.
You claim intuitions are reliable but not infallible! I suggest you are playing with words which is both silly and childish. (All of us, if we are honest, will admit to unreliable intuitions from time to time).
And you were the one to raise the problem of abhorrent commands – actually in the title of your post! The problem that believers have is their consideration of their scriptures to be “holy” or sacred. This means the commands in them should be considered above all else. They are just not ancient books to be considered rationally. The honest believer would never have the hubris to interpret her god’s commands.
You are lost. There is no help or leadership in recommending to trust your intuitions if they are not too different from your commands but trust your commands if they are not too different from your intuitions. That is just a cop out.
And you refuse to dig deeper. To allow humans to use their intelligence and moral logic to resolve such situations. The fact is that human intuitions (and consequently the “divine” commands they produce) have often been, and often are, radically wrong on moral issues. And rational consideration of objective reality enables us to see this.
Both our intuitions and divine commands have been used to justify slavery, human sacrifice, racism, apartheid, segregation, genocide and discrimination against women and gays. And so on.
Rational consideration, collectively as well as individually, based on objective facts and the nature of our humanity enables us to develop a far more reliable and humane morality than “holy” scriptures and intuitions.
But you seem afraid to go there.
Well shoot me down like a dog and bury me Ken, grab a load of this quote.
“The sensible thing is to take what i see as honest comments and treat them accordingly”.
I thought that was exactly what i did, lets quote you some more. When asked about Gods commands concerning killing, lying stealing and adultery you replied…
” when it comes to morals all commands are dangerous”
and when i asked you about Jesus’ teachings eg his admonition to love your neighbour as yourself you said…..
” I have never seen Christ as a postive moral source “.
I’m not sure which part is silly, they are your words, your stated position. Which part did i get wrong or misrepresent?
I see you are now clairvoyant [ somewhat at odds with your science background i would have thought ] as apparently you know what makes me feel better about myself. Well done and congratulations on you new skillset.
Kenny boyo
“Rational consideration, collectively as well as individually, based on objective facts and the nature of our humanity”
That old naive utopian idealist Ken is surfacing again. Take a look at history Ken and tell us which part of the human character gives you such hope and why you think it has any hope of triumphing over mans darker sides.
” Both our intuitions and divine commands have been used to justify slavery, human sacrifice, racism, apartheid, segregation, genocide and discrimination against women and gays”
I find some hope for you in this quote as at last you seem to be acknowledging “humanity” is capable of terrible things even without divine commands, now all you have to do is come up with some way to get them to agree with your version of what constitutes moral behaviour. The question is why will anyone let alone the majority agree with you. History is not on your side. People are not becoming more rational, more considerate of others, more reasonable. In fact the modern lament in the media is that society is becoming less civil, less reasonable, less rational, more violent, more selfish.
I see Ken so saying there is a difference between reliability and infallibility is childish silly and playing with words.
Lets grant for the sake of argument there is no distinction between the two. It follows immediately that any method with is not infallible and sometimes errs, must therefore be unreliable and hence cannot be trusted.
Find me one method we use for gaining information about anything which is infallible and which humans have never made mistakes using?
Obviously there is none, which means of course no method humans use is reliable or trustworthy which of course means humans cannot gain any knowledge at all.
Far from upholding secular morals this position leads to scepticism about everything.
Please do not ever again say that science is reliable and also admit scientists make mistakes unless you are willing to acknowledge the distinction between infallibility and reliability is not a “word game”.
Last comment for the evening.
Quite apart from the fact that i find you to be potentially more dangerous and more scarey than i will ever be, given your rejection of Gods commands concerning killing, lying, stealing,adultery and loving your neighbour as yourself, there is the problem of your Utopianism.
Utopians have been some of the most dangerous people in recent history. I’m thinking of Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot etc. Individuals who had visions of a better world based solely on human rationality and science [purged of religion and God], they washed their countries in the blood of untold millions, trampled all oppostion and did it all in the name of Man. No external standard to be measured against, only what they thought right, autonomously arrived at and integrated and God help anybody thought differently.
” Especially ideologies which are inhuman, that promote differences, racism, sexual and gender discrimination, etc.”
Correct me if i’m wrong here but since you are an atheist [ no God] then all these ideologies must be wholely and solely human and i would be pretty sure they were all objectively based on things like economics, power, control.
Every arguement you make Ken has the same big logic hole right in the middle, you say there is no real actual God [just an idea in the mind of some men], then everything you hold up by way of a negative example [even your misunderstanding of DCT] is yet another example of the character of man. Blaming religion is just blaming man, blaming DCTs is just blaming man. When it comes down to it your “objectively based moralty” means picking those characters of man you prefer and rejecting those you dont. And thats the essence of both relativism and subjectivity.
Sign up for your morality and world view….I think not.
Jeremy – surely it is clear that what you got wrong is your equation of my rejection of command ethics (metaethics) as also a rejection of specific moral positions. The fact is that I base my positions on objective reality and my humanity. So I find murder wrong. Yest you can accept that becuase you seem to believe that one can only reach a moral position by blindly following a command. I suggest, as have others, that is morally juvenile. And leads to the most extreme justification of moral relativism.
Jeremy, step back and forget about me. I am maturely confident in my ethical positions. It would be more sensible to examine your own approach – and attempt to justify it.
So far you seem to “justify” your position by attack straw men in my position.
Utopianism, indeed! Where have you been?
Matt – your problem is that you have never got your head around scientific epistemology, have you?
The fact is that any method of understanding reality, especially one worth its salt, must err, must be unreliable in specific cases. Those claiming infallibility should be ignored for that reason alone. (They aren’t worth their salt).
We know science makes mistakes precisely because science discovers its mistake!
Because it interacts with reality. Bases itself on evidence from reality and validates ideas against reality.
It is absolutely stupid to claim this real description of humanity’s understanding of its surroundings as “mean[ing] humans cannot gain any knowledge at all.” You have to deny the very fact that you are interacting via a computer and the internet to think that way.
Similar with questions of morality. Of course we will get our decisions wrong from time to time. Surely that is clear from human history – and even from current politics. But those who never make mistakes never do anything.
One thing we can be sure of, though, is basing our ethics on objectively existing facts and the nature of human existence can enable us to make progress. To eventually see where we have made mistakes and correct them.
We didn’t get where we are today in terms of human rights, especially with respect to oppression of women and homosexuals, or to things like slavery and apartheid, by basing our morality on religious commands, or even intuitions.
So this is why I am so critical of your refusal to dig deeper. To see beyond religious commands and human intuitions. These are sure ways of reaching relativist positions, morally. And you can’t get out of that trap by ignoring objective reality, or worse, fighting against it.
And that is why you cannot provide any lead or leadership on moral questions. Why you always seem to equivocate.
Ken
Since you didnt read it or ignored it and since you failed to respond, i will repeat my last comment of yesterday evening…
“Every arguement you make Ken has the same big logic hole right in the middle, you say there is no real actual God [just an idea in the mind of some men], then everything you hold up by way of a negative example [even your misunderstanding of DCT] is yet another example of the character of man. Blaming religion is just blaming man, blaming DCTs is just blaming man. When it comes down to it your “objectively based moralty” means picking those characters of man you prefer and rejecting those you dont. And thats the essence of both relativism and subjectivity.”
Let me make it very clear , it is your position [for reasons you have made very clear] that is one of moral RELATIVISM and is SUBJECTIVE
As such although you may get some things right but you have a shifting standard which provides only limited guidance and which will forever change.
“and my humanity.”
I am impressed, apparently your humanity lacks all those negative qualities so common in the rest of us [ greed, selfishness, hatred, dishonesty etc] that you feel you can base a moral/ethical code upon it.
“It would be more sensible to examine your own approach – and attempt to justify it.”
Actually callibration against external standards is a very normal and essential part of everyday human life, we do it all the time in science, engineering, law enforcement, retail. It ensures accuracy, fairness and objectivity. For some reason you believe you are exempt from measurement against external standards in your morality. How can we trust you, who knows your standard?
You are being silly again, Jeremy. These sort of raves have no connection with reality, really don’t add anything and don’t require a response.
Actually Ken, I am well aware that we can rely on and trust the results of scientific studies despite the fact that such studies are not infallible and sometimes contain mistakes. That was my point, claiming that moral intuitions are not infallible and that sometimes they are mistaken does not commit me to claiming we cannot rely on them and hence I am “ lost” “ is lost. The fact you are quiet willing to recognise this distinction when its “scientific studies” amply illustrates my point.
As to the claim that my position is relativism, I have already refuted this point numerous times as has Glenn, you keep ignoring the arguments and repeating a false claim, that’s harldy compelling.
Finally, as I have pointed out before your claims about science simply beg the question you state science can be trusted because
“Because it interacts with reality. Bases itself on evidence from reality and validates ideas against reality.”
If God exists he is part of reality, if objective moral principles exist they are part of morality, hence theology would meet all the criteria you mention above. These criteria demarce science from other disciplines such as theology or ethics only if you assume that what science studies is the only thing that is real.
Moreover, there are sophisticated anti-realist views of science which would deny that science maps reality, but rather constructs useful empirically adequate theories not theories that track the truth. These views may be mistaken but they are not mistaken simply in virtue of you deciding to describe science in realist terms.
So I stand by my original claims you misrepresent others, and frequently contradict yourself. In this case you contend that because I claim intiutions are fallible, I cannot rely on them and ” I am lost” then in the next post you assert the very opposite with regards to science and suggest its because I cant get my head around epistemology. This is almost funny
“Matt – your problem is that you have never got your head around scientific epistemology, have you?”
Same old broken record.
Ken
To paraphrase yourself, since you dont answer I must conclude you surrender the points made….
1, that your regular examples are in fact characteristic of mankind, hence do not support your position
2, that your own humanity is not really any better than any one elses and as such provides no basis for an “objectively based morality”
3, that callibration against external standards is a valid indeed essential part of human life and interaction.
Feel free to point out which of these dont connect to reality.
Ken you write
If one believed a perfectly good, omnscient rational person commanded X then to do the opposite would be irrational.” So in such a situation you would follow orders and commit genocide! And that is the key problem with divine command ethics.
Actually Ken as I have pointed out any secular ethical system has the same implication, in fact merely acknowledging somethings are right and wrong has this implication.
Take any secular account of right and wrong you like, If Genocide was found to fit the criteria the secular account entails you should commit Genocide.
Moreover, take any account of the nature of rightness, if Genocide has the property in question it follows Genocide is right.
I’ll turn the question on you, the problem with your account is that it entails that if our nature as a sentient being and our intuitions and scientific conventions and so on, lead to the conclusion you ought to commit genocide your theory entails we should.
Obviously, your account then is non autonomous and relativistic.
Matt – there are really two different issues here.
1:You have only advanced “divine” commands and personal intuitions as a source of your morality – one checking on the other.
Might I point out that the sort of inhumane actions committed by humanity over the years have been justified in exactly that way – I extend commands to include ideological commands (and I guess we can include divine in the ideological).
Obviously both methods (commands and intuitions) are flawed (and ideological commands are in many cases just a justification for, or rationalisation of, moral intuitions).
Now I say (and I think a large portion of humanity agrees with me) that this is inadequate. We would never have got to the Declaration of Human Rights with this limited approach to ethics. (However such a limited approach is quite sufficient to visit all sorts of horrors on humanity, religious and non-religious).
We have made moral progress because we are capable of intelligently considering situations. We can consider the evidence, the objective facts of situations. We can recognise our own humanity, intuitions as well as objective nature. We can recognise our social and empathetic character.
It is this objective basis for our ethics which has enabled, and is enabling, human moral progress.
The fact that you talk about morality without recognising this is why I say you are lost. Basically your approach encourages a conservatism, sticking with the morality of the past no matter how inhumane.
And becuase you seem to be completely unwilling to accept an objective basis of moral decisions, unwilling to dig deeper, you inevitably must end up with a relativist approach. How can it be otherwise if you rely only on your intuitions (with all their subjective problems) and commands which (because they are “divine” or sacred – as were those from Mao Zedong and Stalin) have no objective basis.
You can “refute” your relativism as much as you like, even include evidence from your partner in the charge on the windmill, but without relying on any objective basis your ethics must be relativist.
Of course – you (like many religionists who claim command ethics) may well argue for a specific moral judgement and in the process use objective facts. That only shows inconsistency and a disconnection between claims and practice. Not at all unusual in our species.
2: Your real ignorance of scientific epistemology is shown by your claim: “If God exists he is part of reality, if objective moral principles exist they are part of morality, hence theology would meet all the criteria you mention above. “
Theology just doesn’t start from evidence. (“If god exists” is not evidence). It starts with a god belief and then works hard to justify that belief be inventing arguments.
There is no starting evidence. There is no checking against reality. There is no validation against reality. So theology is just not science.
Just imagine of a theologian actually “proved” his god did not exist! All sorts of “logical” arguments would come out to “prove” her wrong.
In contrast when a scientist proves their pet idea or hypothesis is wrong it is a moment of exhilaration. I can assure you in my research whenever I found my ideas were wrong I knew I was making progress. A chance to develop ideas which reflect reality better.
3: Mind you, I think it is interesting and one can probably draw some conclusions from this, that in both situations – your concept of morality and your concept of how science is done, that you choose to ignore reality. You refuse to adopt an approach which relies on an objective basis and gives reality the “last word.”
Jeremy, none of your points “connect to reality.”
No surrender.
Ken
1 you write I have “You have only advanced “divine” commands and personal intuitions as a source of your morality” This confuses ontology and epistemology. Intuitions are one of the basic sources of our knowledge of whats right and wrong Divine commands explain the nature of rightness and wrongness.
2.Your claim that people have appealed to intuitions to justify inhumane actions has been refuted before. As I noted people have appealed to human rights charters to justify injustice. People have appealed to science to justify injustice and so on, none of these proves human rights or science is flawed.
3. you write “We would never have got to the Declaration of Human Rights with this limited approach to ethics”. this is highly debatable the DHR was drawn up by a Catholic theologian, the notion of human rights was developed in medieval theology, many of the early modern defenders of human rights Locke, Pufendorf, and to some extent Grotius were in fact divine command theorists, English and US bill of rights grew out of Puritan theology, and so on, this comment is really historically ignorant.
Moreover, the biggest opponents of “human rights” were often secularists. Bentham called rights nonsense on stilts, Marx opposed the idea of human rights and so on.
4. “We have made moral progress because we are capable of intelligently considering situations. We can consider the evidence, the objective facts of situations. We can recognise our own humanity, intuitions as well as objective nature. We can recognise our social and empathetic character.”
Yes, I agree we recognise all these things, none of that is incompatible with saying that the best account of the nature of wrongness is that wrongness consists in being contrary to Gods commands. All the above tell us who we have come to “know” what is right and wrong and deal with moral epistemology not moral ontology.
5. You write “And becuase you seem to be completely unwilling to accept an objective basis of moral decisions, unwilling to dig deeper, you inevitably must end up with a relativist approach. How can it be otherwise if you rely only on your intuitions (with all their subjective problems) and commands which (because they are “divine” or sacred – as were those from Mao Zedong and Stalin) have no objective basis.
But I have already on more than one occasion refuted the claim that my approach leads to relativism, so asserting a claim I have refuted proves nothing
6. you write “You can “refute” your relativism as much as you like, even include evidence from your partner in the charge on the windmill, but without relying on any objective basis your ethics must be relativist.”
Actually if someone refutes a position and provides evidence against it its false. You can’t escape this by simply asserting your position and saying “it must be true”
7. You write “Of course – you (like many religionists who claim command ethics) may well argue for a specific moral judgement and in the process use objective facts. That only shows inconsistency and a disconnection between claims and practice. Not at all unusual in our species.” But this is again an assertion that accepting divine command meta-ethics is inconsistent with using objective facts, mere assertions prove nothing.
8 “Theology just doesn’t start from evidence. (“If god exists” is not evidence)” this misrepresents what I said, my point was that you can claim Theology is not tested by reality unless you assume God is not real.
You add “with It starts with a god belief and then works hard to justify that belief be inventing arguments. There is no starting evidence. There is no checking against reality. There is no validation against reality. So theology is just not science.” Actually, your confusing natural theology, with theology in general, but putting that aside, the fact is any epistemology including science, starts with certain premises which it cannot prove, to say otherwise leads to an infinite regress of proofs and hence scepticism. Moreover, theology does test its claims against reality, for example a contradictory theory can be discounted because in reality contradictions do not exist. The claim that God created a flat earth 6006 years ago can be tested against reality as can the claim that the universe was created a finite time ago, and so on.
Again all we have are assertions based largely on ignorance of both theology and epistemology.
7. You write Just imagine of a theologian actually “proved” his god did not exist! All sorts of “logical” arguments would come out to “prove” her wrong.
The same is true with the starting points of science, the belief in an external world, other people, the validity of inductive reasoning and so on, no one has proved these and all proofs have generated counter arguments. All you are doing here is showing your ignorance of epistemology
8. You write “You refuse to adopt an approach which relies on an objective basis and gives reality the “last word.” unfortunately asserting “I have an objective basis” over and over is not really a terribly credible approach.
If you can either (a) refute a divine command theory of meta-ethics or (b) provide a more adequate naturalistic theory, that might provide an answer, but humanist slogans based on caricatures of history theology and naïve understandings of science and epistemology have no real cred.
Sorry Matt, I can’t make sense of your last comment. It seems to be largely a repeat of mine which makes it confusing!
Sorry Ken, messed the formatting up. I have fixed it now.
Ken
seriously interesting world view and view of yourself
“none of your points “connect to reality.”
3, so in your practice of science you never bothered to be sure any measuring instruments you used were accurate, you dont care if the petrol pump is accurate or if the policemans radar is accurate, you dont accept the need for callibration against external standards
2, you are claiming not to have any of the negative character traits of mankind, i am impressed
1, God is real, you just dont like His effect on some people.
Ken your version of “objective facts” is clearly a case of picking and choosing those you like and ignoring those you dont and as previously mentioned that is subjective and relative. I’m starting to believe your “reality” is all in your mind.
“Might I point out that the sort of inhumane actions committed by humanity over the years have been justified in exactly that way – I extend commands to include ideological commands (and I guess we can include divine in the ideological).”
You just dont get it do you Ken, you keep extending your objections to any area of human activity you disagree with, any part of human nature you dont like.
How about an “objectively based morality” taking into account the historically and contemporalily dominant characteristics of human nature, selfishness, greed, intolerance, need for revenge, hatred, racism, colonisation. Such a morality would recognise the reality of human existance could do away with “guilt” and we could just get on doing what we have always done.
Why do you want to base morality only on the nice characteristics of humankind, what makes them nice, right or good?
Why do you choose them?
Without an external standard how do you even know they are right or good and not just your preferences.
Clearly they havent been humankinds preferences an awful lot of the time and still are not even now.
Ken keeps ranting and raving yet his ears are deaf to his own hollow and empty words that have long since defused. Seriously, give it up
Ken,
to back up Matt’s word, please explain how perfectly rational objective scientists and philosophers actually applauded the forced sterilization of invalids, paupers and the disabled in the US and Canada as the result of the eugenics movement?
or how oppenheimer, einstein and a slew of secular scientific minds created the atomic bomb as policy of expediting the US victory in world war 2 which lead to hiroshima and nagasaki tragedy as well as the holocaust impulse of the Nazi’s to create a pure race out of social darwinian implications?
you chide religionists and their divine commands as heinous yet neglect the shit in your own ideology even as its stench is much fouler as resulting for more human lives spilt in secular consequences than the stink of the crusades and the inquisition.
so ken keep ranting and raving and express your hate for religion even as you play janus and speak of tolerance on the other side of your mouth. be assured such words are empty and hypocritical. I don’t hate your kind Ken, I pity them and their fantasies
Sounds like you are a bit of a ranter yourself, Alvy!
Alvin, you are spending your valuable commenting time knocking down straw men, attributing positions to others which just aren’t the case, rather than presenting your own approach to morality. This makes you comments pointless because there is really nothing to respond to.
However, I will take you up on your use of the word “calibration” – rather unfortunate because it does imply as relativist approach.
I would much prefer the word “validation” as it does imply some sort of objectivity.
But just imagine some examples of moral “calibration.” Someone growing up in South Africa or Southern USA during the 50s “calibrates” their feelings about race (derived from the bible, church and intuitions) against other members of society. This confirms their intuition that racism is OK, in fact ordained.
Or growing up in New Zealand in the 50s. One could calibrate their morality (derived from the bible and intuitions) on women or homosexuals against other members of society, including religious and political leaders, and confirms their prejudices against women’s equality and support for discriminatory laws against homosexuals.
Or what about a priest in the catholic church. Calibration against their colleagues and their pope would confirm perhaps that one should not expose the child rape that is going on, or perhaps it is OK to even indulge in it oneself.
“Calibration”, especially against the common herd, the poilitical and religious leader or “holy” books is a sure way to moral relativism.
Now one could choose to “calibrate” against objective reality – I see this as validation.
I wrote a post 3 years ago – “Now I’m to blame for Stalin!” (http://openparachute.wordpress.com/2007/11/14/now-im-to-blame-for-stalin/) which dealt with that. This referred to the film The Lives of Others (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others) about the actions of a Stasi officer in the old East regime regime. The film is excellent and well worth watching for its moral lessons.
A strong lesson for me in this film was that an individual could actually take a situation and act humanely, on the basis of the objective facts, rather than following orders, doing one’s job, or calibrating one’s morality against one’s colleagues.
We have to hold such people up as heroes. They are not the moral relativists of those following commands, following orders, or doing their job. Why don’t we get catholic priests leaving their church in flocks and campaigning against its hypocrisy and inhumanity?
Just think about real situations Alvin. Perhaps I show my age but think about your own attitude towards the campaigns against discrimination against women and homosexuals.
You may have noticed a change in your own moral viewpoint (I certainly did). Why was this. After all your intuitions (of that time) and the “divine” commands of the bible and religious leaders would have driven you to support the status quo.
But if you had started considering the objective facts. The reality of the position of women and homosexuals in that dysfunctional society. The immorality of that situation when considered against basic human characteristics of empathy and freedom. Then you would have been unable to validate your prejudices against reality (although they had already been “calibrated” against social norms). It says something about the good side of our species that we have been able to respond to the objective facts and as a society change our attitudes on such things.
Now we have done that because many people were able to see beyond “calibration” against social norms, their own intuitions and the commands of their religious leaders or “holy” bibles. They were able to consider the objective reality of the situation our society was in.
These campaigns enabled a change in social viewpoint so that human intuitions also changed (people learned) and social “calibration” noe actually produces a more humane morality.
Many, if not most, Christians changed their moral outlook on these situations. They allowed objective reality to influence their ethics.
But, pity those poor religionists who stuck with their command ethics and intuitions. Inevitably this prevents people from learning from the real world. Their ethics always lag behind and are inevitably conservative and inhumane.
Matt – I really question your honesty in this discussion. You are prone to pull claims out of the void to support your argument without them necessarily bearing any relation to reality.
Let’s take your claim the the Universal Declaration of Human Rights “was drawn up by a catholic theologian.”
Check that out, Matt!!
The principal drafter of the declaration was John Peters Humphrey, described as a Canadian legal scholar, jurist, and human rights advocate.
The second draft was by René Cassin, described as a French jurist, law professor and judge.
Other well known members of the Commission who contributed significantly to the creation of the Declaration included Eleanor Roosevelt of the United States, who was Chairman, Jacques Maritain of France, Charles Malik of Lebanon (a philosopher), and P. C. Chang of China (a diplomat whose philosophy was known to be strongly based on the teachings of Confucius).
Jacques Maritain was a catholic philosopher so I guess this is the person you mean. But to claim the declaration “was drawn up” by him is a desperate attempt a justifying theology, isn’t it? (And claims like this are just chauvinistic and demeaning to all the people who participated in preparing this declaration).
Eleanor Roosevelt was actually well known for her public spat with the catholic church in the person of Cardinal Spellman over catholic schools receiving federal aid.
The fact is the declaration is a secular document. As such it received input from a range of countries, political outlooks and religious beliefs and non-beliefs). This democratic and pluralist nature of secularism is why it is so successful.
As for the declaration itself – have a look at it and tell me which articles can be attributed solely to “divine” commands and/or human intuitions.
And tell me which ones are not consistent with an objective basis for ethics.
As for Marx, someone I have read a bit, tell me where he opposes the idea of human rights. If anything his great fault was to advance a radical socialism with the aim of liberating humanity and convince himself that his political wish could be supported scientifically. (Not the first person, or last, to substitute wishes for reality in scientific analysis).
Of course its very easy to slander people like Marx, without having any supporting substance, because these days few people will defend him. (In many ways a pity). But it is hardly honest.
Your justifications for theology as a science are really weird. Whenever has a theologian ever tested any of its claims about reality? Never. The testing is done by scientists and theology has to be dragged screaming resistance for years until it finally accepts new discoveries. Sure theological claims of reality can be and are tested regularly – by scientists not theologians. They are too busy debating the number of angels on the head of a pin and devising arguments to ring-fence parts of reality from human investigation.
And it is really silly to claim there is no proof for the effectiveness of scientific epistemology. Simply the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The fact that you confidently use you computer to debate me shows science works. At that test of scientific epistemology goes on minute by minute around the world and shows it to be extremely successful. Theology never allows such tests.
To demand a mathematical or logical proof is surely childish when faced with reality – especially childish if you purely wish to play “philosophical” games with it.
One positive – you claim to agree with my statment: “We have made moral progress because we are capable of intelligently considering situations. We can consider the evidence, the objective facts of situations. We can recognise our own humanity, intuitions as well as objective nature. We can recognise our social and empathetic character.”
So consequently you should not be criticising my ethical basis being objective – you should accept that.
You only objections would seem to be:
1: You talk about divine commands – I say there is no such thing. You have yet to justify your claim and the fact that you have problems with biblical commands for human sacrifice and genocide doesn’t bode well for you.;
2: You claim intuitions “are one of the basic sources of our knowledge of whats right and wrong.” I guess you now acknowledge that objective facts about situations is another basic source.
I say we use intuitions all the time – unconscious decision making is vital for our social and other activity. But intuitions can be, and often are , wrong. As a society it is dangerous to elevate such intuitions and ignore objective facts. Intuitions can represent bias, prejudice, hatred, etc. But they can also be changed as society uses rational and collective (secular) consideration to consider objective facts. Command ethics often prevent this.
Ken , try here for Marx and human rightshttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/#7.1
Ken,
As for the declaration itself – have a look at it and tell me which articles can be attributed solely to “divine” commands and/or human intuitions.
And tell me which ones are not consistent with an objective basis for ethics.
how about this one from the preamble
recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
The notion of “equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” comes from Christian theology, John Locke in particular a divine command theorist was one of the principle expounders and defenders of this idea. It was based on the idea that all human beings were created in the image of God.
Wolterstorff, Perry, and others argued that absent a theological grounding of this sort, the notion of the equal dignity of all human beings, is unjustified.Peter Singer has rigorously argued the same thesis suggesting that absent such a theological ground
So if you disagree perhaps you can meet the challenge they all pose, which you have avoided addressing in the past,
What non-theological property, is (i) is possessed by all members of the human family (ii) non possessed by non human beings (iii) possessed by all human beings equally and (iv) can plausibly ground the can ground the kinds of rights which the declaration puts forward.
Preferably a property you can scientifically prove exists.
Matt, I wanted a reference for Marx and it’s context. It’s easy to misinterpret his analysis of capitalism and the criticism of property rights incorrectly. But as a socialist he was arguing for the true liberation of humankind, not just formal freedoms which because they were based on property rights ignored the freedom of the majority.
Marx is a very easy person to misquote dishonestly if the context is removed and misrepresentation of his texts are extremely common.
You ask: “What non-theological property, is (i) is possessed by all members of the human family (ii) non possessed by non human beings (iii) possessed by all human beings equally and (iv) can plausibly ground the can ground the kinds of rights which the declaration puts forward.”
Surely that is our humanity. Our nature as intelligent, sentient, social, conscious and empathetic beings. That is well established scientifically and these days there are no very close species or sub species to confuse the issue (eg if Neanderthals still existed our ethical logic might be more complex). This has ethical consequences and can be used to derive many of the articles in the declaration, including the preamble you quote.
Incidentally, we now understand enough about life in general to justify according similar rights to other intelligent, empathetic, social species. Hence current debates on animal rights.
Now you claim this is a theological property and I see that as the typical Christian hubris of claiming credit for science, society and morals. Nothing more than chauvinism. You are just trying to claim for Christianity something humanity has derived for itself. No ” divine” commands used – in fact they would be useless as how can you derive such humane principles from the way that women are treated in religious texts. From the attitude towards homosexuals. From the justification for racism, genocide, human sacrifice. Or from the demand for submission.
To derive such humane articles the draftees and contributing countries would have to recognize the fact of our existence whatever their religious or ideological beliefs. That’s why we consider it a secular document – it is inclusive.
“The fact is the declaration is a secular document”
This is actually a rather vacuous claim. All civil declarations are secular, because that is the meaning of the word secular.
The opposite of secular is not theological. The opposite of secular is ecclesiastical, and nobody has ever claimed that the universal declaration of human rights is an ecclesiastical document.
Ken
Your answer is inadequate the problems are in fact well rehearsed by the writers I mentioned.
First, the properties you cite are not possessed by all “members of the human family” human infants for example are less conscious, sentient and intelligent, than adult cows or pigs. Similarly, temporary unconscious human beings lack these properties So if your answer is correct human infants and temporary unconscious human beings have no rights, and hence no right to life.
Second, these properties are not possessed by all humans equally, some people are more intelligent than others, adults for example posses higher amounts of rationality intelligence self awareness than infants or people with dementure. Mentally retarded people are less intelligent than “normal” people, so this property cannot ground equal rights and dignity.
Third, you really give no plausible answer as to how merely possessing these properties grounds the rights in question. You assert one can derive these rights from the fact we are “empathetic, intelligent, sentient, conscious beings” but asserting that one can derive substantive ought claims from is claims is one thing, actually doing it is another. Perhaps you can show how from the facts you cite alone without any further moral premises, one can get the conclusion that people have say a right to life and so on.
So in fact your response tends to show the difficulties I talked about.
Glenn, I realize you are only thoughtlessly sniping but surely it should worry you that Matt makes a naive, if not dishonest, claim the Universal Declaration of Human Rights “was drawn up by a catholic theologian”. He uses this mistake(?) to somehow claim the declaration is based on religious ethics when it clearly isn’t.
He seems oblivious to the fact that secular is an inclusive concept. Or that the fact that the declaration is secular has absolutely nothing to do with the religious beliefs of members of the drafting commission anyway. It’s purely determined by the content.
No Ken, I used the example of Maritian to contest your claim that religion had nothing to do with the UDHR . Moreover, it was one line of evidence of a whole lot of other lines which you dismissed by calling chauvinistic rather than actually responding to them.
All you showed was that some people involved in the drafting had a secular purpose, thats a far cry from the claim that religious ideas had nothing to do with it. Clearly Maritian shows the contrary.
You are a bit lax with the truth there, Matt.
You had responded to my point that an ethical outlook based only on “divine” commands and in intuitions could not have produced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – my comment: “We would never have got to the Declaration of Human Rights with this limited approach to ethics”.
Your response “this is highly debatable the DHR was drawn up by a Catholic theologian.” Funny sort of “debate” becaase your countered with a falsehood.
Your claim was just not true – the person you claim to have been the “drafter” was a member of the drafting commission – he was not even responsible for either the first or second draft. I pointed this out and you ignored me.
And you misrepresent me. I was not claiming that religion had nothing to do with the commission at all. Just that a wider moral base was required to produce the declaration.
As Glenn pointed out the declaration is a secular document. As such it is inclusive and involved diverse people on the drafting commission and involvement of countries with a diverse range of beliefs in government.
And you must be extremely thick if you honestly try to use my charge of chauvinism as a comment on the Declaration. I said, and have often said in the past, that claims of Christian responsibility for all manners of things – science, culture, art, society, justice, laws, etc., etc., is nothing more than Christian chauvinism. (Such chauvinism is actually a sign of desperation or weakness – I can remember back in the 50s when the Soviet Union seriously claimed that Russia had invented lampposts!)
Your porky about the drafting of the declaration is just one extreme example of such chauvinism (and I must admit it is a new one to me).
And, Matt – it is about time you dropped your hostility to the words secular and “secularism.” You are falling into the same fit of hostility that pope Bennie falls into with his silly campaign against secularism.
Here are some helpful dictionary definition:
“– not controlled by a religious body or concerned with religious or spiritual matters
– not religious or spiritual in nature
– not belonging to a monastic order”
Apart from the fact that one can disagree on the use of “spiritual” the important point is that secular things are not controlled by religion, they are inclusive. And religious people usually participate in secular events and documents. The fact is the Declaration involved people of widely different religious and political views. It didn’t exclude religious people. That’s what made it secular.
That’s what makes it so effective. And attempts for the Organisation of Islamic Countries to create their own non-secular Declaration (which includes Sharia law) is a demonstration of why a religious declaration, based only on “divine” commands and intuition would be a travesty of human rights.
This may interest readers here -as I think he used to comment here:
Dr. Ken Pulliam is Dead
How sad, I was looking forward to meeting him a couple of weeks in Atlanta.
Ken, you write You had responded to my point that an ethical outlook based only on “divine” commands and in intuitions could not have produced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – my comment: “We would never have got to the Declaration of Human Rights with this limited approach to ethics”. and my response was to point out that ethical outlooks based on divine commands have produced the kind of rights you talk about. Locke is an example Maritan is an example, Pufendorf is an example, even the US declaration of independence is an example and so on, the fact that secularists also have produced such understandings does not mean religious views cannot.
So your point Ken was false, its simply not true that theological based ethical systems cannot and have not produced understandings of human rights. History shows the opposite of this claim is true.
I was mistaken to insinuate Maritain was the sole drafter, but the fact that other people who were not Catholics were drafters does not change the truth of the point I made.
I also gave Maritan as one example amougst many which you dismissed by calling it chauvism, unfortunately thesises in intellectual history are not refuted by name calling. You could read the opening chapters of Wolterstorff’s latest book which surveys several studies on the history of human rights in theological thought if you want. But undoubtedly, that will be dismissed with name calling as well.
Matt, you are determined to bad mouth secularism aren’t you? But you demonstrate malice by doing do. Look at the dictionary meanings. Stop conspiring with pope Benny’s silly ideas.
You demonstrate your own paranoia with this claim: “the fact that secularists also have produced such understandings does not mean religious views cannot”
Why be so defensive. Religious people should have no problem accepting and promoting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. After all they are human – it is a common outlook independent of religious beliefs . That’s why we call it secularist – it is inclusive.
My point is that one can’t derive such human rights from command ethics and intuition alone. One has to base them on the objective facts of our humanity and the objective facts of the situations we face.
Now religious people are capable of doing that. (You have admitted to doing so yourself.) Even if they attempt to explain away their positions by appeal to religious dogma. One expects that behaviour from people with mythical delusions.
In fact many religious people have no trouble being ethical, but it happens the same way as it does with me. It’s based on objective facts.
In spite of their command ethics and intuitions.
But those who restrict their ethics to their intuitions and the command ideas derived from intuitions obviously find human rights difficult. The ethical base leads them to conservatism and reactionary, inhumane, ideas of morality.
The attempts to rewrite the Universal Declaration are an example of this.
Ken: according to your ethical system insults, misrepresentation, exaggeration, repeating discredited claims, and ad hominem attacks are all valid and moral ways to elicit the truth of a matter?
This emotion-laden rhetoric seems like a last ditch attempt to rescue your theory of “religion bad, atheism good”.
Ropata – you claim about me. “according to your ethical system insults, misrepresentation, exaggeration, repeating discredited claims, and ad hominem attacks are all valid and moral ways to elicit the truth of a matter”
You know from experience that is not true and of course I stand on my record.
But what is it about your ethical system which allows you to misrepresent others in this way?
It’s certainly no evidence or factually-based is it?
Ken,
First, dictionary meanings are not always the relevant ones in a discussion, it would be silly for example to question a definition of science or knowledge which was being debated in philosophy of science or epistemology on the grounds that the dictionary defined the word differently.
Second, I have given the definition of what I mean by secularism elsewhere I also have offered reasons for thinking its not inclusive. http://www.mandm.org.nz/2010/06/contra-mundum-secularism-and-public-life.html So again ignoring what others have argued, calling people names, impunging motives is not a response, to respond you need to actually address what they say.
Turning to your other comments you write
“You demonstrate your own paranoia with this claim:“the fact that secularists also have produced such understandings does not mean religious views cannot”
Why be so defensive. Religious people should have no problem accepting and promoting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. After all they are human – it is a common outlook independent of religious beliefs . “
Here you make two misrepresentations, first I never said religious people should have a problem promoting the UDHR, so your response here really addresses a straw man. Second, you not that people can and do accept these rights independently of religious beliefs. I agree as I have told you on multiple occasions and as Glenn has told you on multiple occasions, the divine command theory is not the claim that people cannot rationally accept moral beliefs unless they believe in God. It’s the claim that moral properties cannot exist independent of God.
But I did point out to you that the UNDR makes certain claims about human dignity which (a) historically were developed and justified in a particular theological context and (b) I pointed out that outside this context its very difficult to ground or justify these claims. I challenged you to do so and you responded with a fairly glib standard secular position which I pointed out had several problems.
”My point is that one can’t derive such human rights from command ethics and intuition alone.”
Actually you have provided no reason for this but continual assertion, I did however point out that you have failed to provide any reason from scientific facts alone for claiming all members of the human family have equal dignity which grounds various rights.
” One has to base them on the objective facts of our humanity and the objective facts of the situations we face.”
Again you simply assert this claim, I have in fact asked you to show how merely scientific facts can ground such claims you failed to provide it. I asked you to either (a) refute a divine command theory or (b) provide a more plausible secular one, and in each instance you came back simply with assertions. Then occasionally you chide others for not providing evidence, where is yours?
”But those who restrict their ethics to their intuitions and the command ideas derived from intuitions obviously find human rights difficult. The ethical base leads them to conservatism and reactionary, inhumane, ideas of morality.”
Sorry but asserting something and then putting “obviously” in front of it, provides no reason for any position. I noted several divine command theorists who pioneered human rights. You provided no response. I argued that secularists historically have opposed human rights and also noted the difficulties in justifying the existence of human rights from a secularist perspective, you provided no response. Several people in here have pointed out your generalisations about religious ethics are false and in fact secular ethics has lead to inhumane ideas about morality in several instances. You again have not responded.
Sorry Ken but simply repeating humanist mantras is not an argument. Your comments show quite nicely how despite constantly talking about “evidence” secularists often provide precious little for there own position. The demand for proof only applies when someone disagrees with them.
The reality is science by itself has never answered any moral questions and never will.
[…] the Kiwi mini-wave is post titled God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part 1 Kant. Readers of this blog might remember this similar discussion, both posts generated quite the […]
Matt – you arrogantly shut yourself out from rational discussion by claiming:
“dictionary meanings are not always the relevant ones in a discussion”; and
“I have given the definition of what I mean by secularism elsewhere I also have offered reasons for thinking its not inclusive”.
That may be normal theological practice but it is disrespectful not only to discussion partners but to anyone else who tries to follow. In fact it rules any comment you make as incompetent and useless.
I don’t care how you personally wish to redefine words to fit your prejudices. I will continue to use them in the accepted way and simply point out that your positions must be extremely weak if you have to resort to such silly game playing with words. It certainly makes your pronouncements of absolutely no interest to the rational English speaking person out there.
You are similarly playing around with words like “divine” and command. You are quiet happy to use it referring to specific commands like genocide and human sacrifice. Suddenly it becomes an abstract “theory” when you are challenged on the specifics. Now you want to use it to mean only “that moral properties cannot exist independent of God!”
I guess this is the old theological playing with words again. One day you discuss specific commands, the next you retreat into words like “ontology” and “epistemology” rather than accept criticism of the specific “divine” command.
But your last sentence is incredible “The reality is science by itself has never answered any moral questions and never will.” Why come out with this – out of the blue. No one else is dragging science into “answering moral questions” in this discussion.
(Well we know why, dont we? It is the usual defensive reaction when it becomes obvious in a discussion that religion has never answered any moral question and never will. That religion has discredited itself in the moral arena. That religion makes the same mess of its moral pronouncements as it has with its cosmological pronouncements.)
And what are the facts. Talk to scientists – how many of them actually claim that science can answer moral questions? When has science attempted to answer a moral question.?
I think you must hate science so much that it threatens you whenever you feel challenged and you must raise it as a bogeyman.
Now, you will probably admit that science can inform, can help, in discussions of morality. But lets face it – science should actuality be strongly criticised for taking a hands off approach to morality. By assuming almost unanimously that it has no role.
I think Sam Harris, who is extremely critical of science in this area, hit the nail on the head. How was it possible that a few years after the holocaust an international anthropologist organisation could argue against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That one culture could not condemn the practices of another culture. That there was no way of determining right from wrong in such situation!
No, Sam is right. Science should no longer rule itself out of these areas. It should no longer stand aside as religious charlatans pretend moral expertise they don’t have. After all, one cannot separate values from facts and most of us do acknowledge that science has some expertise in the fact arena.
So come off it, Matt. You are silly to criticise science for making pronouncements in the moral area – it should instead be criticised for its hands off approach.
Finally you do absolutely nothing to justify you wild claim that “moral properties cannot exist independent of [your] god.” Absolutely nothing.
In contrast one could argue a justification for the behaviour of the German nation under Hitler using “divine” commands, religious teachings and national intuitions. The anthropologists of the time were extremely remiss for not preparing to go further than such “morality” and declare that some human actions are morally wrong on objective, factual, grounds. Fortunately the UNO did not accept such inhumane ideas. They did take objective facts into account. And after all, one would have to be very blind, with the memory of the holocaust so immediate, to ignore facts and stick with religious and national prejudice.
Is ‘Ken’ a real person?
Richard P – click on my name – goes to my blog and you can research me there.
Notice I can’t do that with you. Perhaps you aren’t real?
Ken, I agree you are real, but lets note your response to Richard P here. You ask him to believe in the reality of a person ( yourself) on the basis of the testimony of a website.
The problem is you Dawkins and others have contended that this is not good enough for rational belief. To believe in the existence of something one needs to have scientific proof, they must propose a “structured” hypothesis which is proven by empirical tests “against reality” and stands up to the rigor of peer review.
So if we took what you said seriously, no one here should believe you are a real person. No scientific proof of your existence has been offered, I know of know published structured hypothesis that a real person Ken Perrot is behind these postings, certainly such a claim has not been subject to rigorous peer reviewed empirical testing. All we have is the word of a website and a request we take the authors words as true on faith.
Hey Matt, how about improving your spelling and grammar for the next post you make?
I am dyslexic, I try very hard use correct grammar and to not make typos but trying is not the problem. The problem is that Madeleine is not available to edit at the moment.
I do suspect that a person called Ken Perrot does not exist – at least blogging in New Zealand.
The point is that Richard P (or anyone here) is in a position where they can easily do their own work to establish my existence or not. They have an easy start (which I don’t have for Richard P as he could be one of Madeleine’s non-de-plumes for all I know – so far more effort is required to even start.)
Now I am sure that you could oppose any evidence Richard found for my existence with your “logic” (I suspect you wouldn’t worry about factual evidence). But Richard could quickly be sufficiently sure of my existence to consider anyone who doubted it an absolute fool.
And that is the nature of scientific knowledge – of course our picture of reality is never absolutely perfect. There is always some small measure of doubt about some things and room for changes. But there is a huge amount of reality that we are so sure of that only an absolute fool would disagree (and they would be using “logic” rather than evidence to justify their disagreement).
Footnote:– notice Matt that I didn’t say, as you claim, “You ask him to believe in the reality of a person ( yourself) on the basis of the testimony of a website. “
I said “click on my name – goes to my blog and you can research me there.”
Intuitively I recognised that people accept reality better if they research for themselves rather than relying on possibly mythical tales or others testimony. Richard can do his own research and make up his own mind.
Signed: Ken Perrott – (But don’t take my word for it).
Matt – should say I am flattered you put my name alongside Dawkins. He is such a lovely person I am so proud that you see me in the same light.
But WTF? Your knee is jerking again.
Ken
Once again when I criticise Dawkins no defence of his arguments is forthcoming instead we have ad hominen psycho analysis.
But, again your response fails to address my points, First you state
“Footnote:- notice Matt that I didn’t say, as you claim, “You ask him to believe in the reality of a person ( yourself) on the basis of the testimony of a website. “
I said “click on my name – goes to my blog and you can research me there.”
Actually, in order to read the information on your website and do research by reading others, one would have to rely on testimony. that is my point.
And I note again when I ask you for proof, your response is simply to assert that “But Richard could quickly be sufficiently sure of my existence to consider anyone who doubted it an absolute fool.. Unfortunately asserting that one can find proof is not adequate, I doubt you would accept me saying that “God exists, if you look at this website X called the bible read it and research from there you’ll find he exists and only a fool would say otherwise” as an adequate demand for your demand for proof.
In fact, the last 300 years have shown that when people do actually try and provide empirical proofs for the existence of other people they fail, the arguments in fact have probably been less sucessful than the proofs for Gods existence. Simply ignoring 300 years of failed attempts by asserting things is not a response.
Ok sorry for my previous comment.
Matt, you are determined to misrepresent, aren’t you. It’s really quite simple. Read what I said. I was not asking Richard to accept my “testimony.” I was suggesting he could research the problem, find the evidence, make up his own mind. In the process of doing this he could actually meet me. He doesn’t have to rely on anybody’s “testimony.” Especially not any charlatan who has financial and ideological reasons for promoting a fraud.
Why is it that you have problems with facts and evidence? You seem to find the concepts unfamiliar. I guess theologians really have no use for such ideas.
You show how out of touch with reality you are with the silly claim “when people do actually try and provide empirical proofs for the existence of other people they fail.”
But, come off it, Matt. You are sufficiently sure of my existence to take the effort to type this rubbish. And you haven’t yet met me! Or probably have not even heard “testimony” from someone who has. Are you going to deny my existence or claim there is no empirical proof of my existence after we have shaken hands or shared a wine?
I think you theologians have too much time on your hands to invent these sort of problems. I guess that is because you don’t do anything real in life anyway.
As for your defensive preoccupation with “proving” the existence of gods. Why bother with me? I have assured you that I think they exist. I don’t see how anyone could doubt this.
It’s just that I see them existing in peoples minds (and I think all current anthropologists think the same) – you see them somewhere else.
Ken,
I responded to your first point in my last comment, I accept you told Richard to read your post and to research from there. What I think you fail to realise is that this sort of research involves accepting things on the basis of testimony and cannot be done unless you do that. You may be unaware of this implication but that does not mean its an implication.
For example, you provided a link and said “this is my website” to even start the process Richard has to assume that the link you gave actually is a link to your website. If he then reads the site “Open Parachute” and reads the “about me” section, he has to assume that he has in fact reached the open parachute site and not a fake. If he goes into checking what’s on this site by reading books or articles, or relevant documents he will have to assume that those documents are accurate and so on. The fact is you simply do not grasp how pervasive the acceptance of testimony is in our knowledge or the kind of extreme scepticism one would fall into if we actually followed the methods you and others assert we should. Science which relies heavily on published studies which others read would collapse if we refused to accept things on the basis of testimony.
Second, you said I “can’t understand” the concept of facts and evidence and then generalised from that to suggest theologians never use these concepts. That is further evidence of how poorly you reason on these issues and how you let sterotypes govern your thinking. First, accepting ( as I do) that empirical or deductive proof plays an important but limited role in our knowing things, does not entail I do not “understand these concepts” and even if I did not you could not generalise form this to the claim that all theologians do not uses these things.
Moreover, I note you use the common new atheist fan tactic of referring to every Philosophical point I make as “theology” . Its not, the idea that not everything we believe is based on empirical proof is pretty much accepted by all epistemologists secular or religious and has been for thousands of years. The person who is ignorant of how “evidence” and “facts” work here is not me Ken its you. Like new athiests you have the breath taking hubris to assume that because you are a soil scientist you can pronounce on matters like epistemology and ignore 2000 years of reflection and writing on it.
Then on the point I made about how we cannot empirically prove the existence of other minds your response is to simply assert “rubbish”. Again you seem to think ignoring arguments and making grand prouncements as a soil scientist counts for something it does not. I suggest you actually read the literature on the problem of other minds, look at how the proofs offered for there existence have failed. This again is not Theology is something that occurred in post-enlightenment secular philosophy.
You state “You are sufficiently sure of my existence to take the effort to type this rubbish. And you haven’t yet met me! Or probably have not even heard “testimony” from someone who has.” I agree, I am sure you exist, yet I have never met you so I have not seen or heard or touched you, nor have I had any testimony from others you exist, nor have I ever been presented with a “structured hypothesis” about the existence of Ken Perot as the best explaination for the existence of certain writings on the internet, nor have I been provided with compelling empirical proof of such a hypothesis which has withstood rigourouse peer review. Yet despite this I am sure of your existence and rationally so, what does this tell you. It tells you one is not irrational in believing in the existence of other people even if one has no empirical proof that such people exist Your answer here nicely illustrates my point. In fact the only evidence anyone has on MandM that you exist is the fact that you say so in writing. In otherwords your testimony.
”Are you going to deny my existence or claim there is no empirical proof of my existence after we have shaken hands or shared a wine?” Yes, because direct experience of a person is not the same as an empirical proof they exist, remember not long ago in here you ridiculed the idea that we can know things by direct experience, you suggested that our experience is often mistaken and so we should not trust it without empirical proof. So by your logic the fact that I perceive your face and behaviour, feel your touch when we shake hands, taste wine etc is not evidence, after all I know someone who remembers experiencing a bus going through a brick wall, so this is simply not good enough as proof.
Finally, your suggestion that every anthropologist in the world believes in the existence of God is breathtakingly ignorant. Moreover even if it were true it is irrelevant, the fact that people agree on something does not make it true. The only way consensus could count is as an argument from authority, but you have denied we can accept things on the say so of experts unless they provide empirical proof, so where is the empirical proof that God only exists in peoples minds. Provide it please Ken, does the fact you cant mean I can claim you don’t understand facts and evidence? Moreover, even if one does accept appeals to consensus as a legitimate argument from authority. In this case the experts in question are experts in anthropology, not philosophy of religion which actually studies the question of Gods existence. The fact that most anthrologists hold a particular view in philosophy of religion is no more significant than that most lawyers don’t understand quantum mechanics. Who cares? Interestingly if you examine those who have actually studied the arguments for and against Gods existence and examined the rationality of theism and specialise in those subjects the vast majority believe in God. If this occurred in climatology you and others would insist those not trained in the subject listen to the experts, and base public policy and social policy on their results. But of course you don’t here, because the politics are not in your favour.
Like most sceptics its really about getting the right ideological conclusion and commitment to evidence and scepticism etc are useful tools to be wielded in or ignored depending on the politics.
Matt, this is the sort of rubbish (commonly debated by first year philosophy students trying to impress) which gives theology and naive philosophy a bad name.
Humanity didn’t get where it is today by taking such rubbish seriously. We have got on with investigating and understanding the real world and left you guys far behind.
Ken, so in the end all you can do is shout”rubbish” denigrate others academic abilities, denigrate subjects and then repeat the position I have refuted and assert its necessary for progress.
Matt, the proof of the pudding is in the eating (which actually is a very sound epistemological principle).
We know the progress science has brought humanity – pretty effective indicator of how well scientific epistemology works as a way of discovering and understanding reality.
In contrast your naive solipsism has got absolutely nowhere. Your theology has been in constant retreat. When was the last time physicists took notice of a theological “discovery”? Yet you guys are forced, eventually to accept new scientific knowledge – even though it might take a few hundred years.
And you guys have the arrogance to lecture science!! It’s a bit like the pope lecturing us on morality while covering up child rape.
Mind you, people are used to such hubris and we are more likely to consider actions rather than words. And doesn’t that show the depth of theological hypocrisy?
Ken,
You write “ Matt, the proof of the pudding is in the eating (which actually is a very sound epistemological principle).
We know the progress science has brought humanity – pretty effective indicator of how well scientific epistemology works as a way of discovering and understanding reality. In contrast your naive solipsism has got absolutely nowhere.
Actually this again reinforces my points not yours, your correct sollipism gets us nowhere I agree. It’s a silly position, but note I wasn’t endorsing sollipism, I was pointing out that your claim, that one should not believe in anything unless it is scientifically proven leads to sollipism. We progress because we do not demand that everything be scientifically proven.
As to progress science when it is limited to certain contexts has brought us a lot of understanding. Particularly when it comes to technology and understanding the physical world. But in other areas it has not made progress at all, science has never been able to answer moral questions for example, and tell us what is right and wrong. Science also has made little progress in making human beings less selfish or immoral or helping people become reconciled to their enemies and so on, in many contexts science has simply given us more effective and ruthless methods of being cruel.
In these particular areas I think theology and religion has actually been significantly more effective than science. Religion for example inspired people to build hospitals, outlaw infanticide, fight slavery, set up charities, esthablish conventions regarding non combatant immunity, and restrictions on when its acceptable to go to war. Developed accounts of human rights and so on. Often centuries before Newton or Darwin.
So I agree the proof is in the pudding and what the pudding shows is that science has made progress in some areas, but in others it has made little and theology has made significantly more progess than science.
In the end all you can do is appeal to stero types, you note one Christian leader has allegedly covered up child abuse. I could point to abuses made by scientists, consider some of the horrific experiments in the name of scientific progress.
You talk about theologians being forced to accept scientific knowledge 100 years latter, when in fact the historical picture tells us that theologians had developed heliocentric theories 100’s of years prior to Copernicus and Galileo and were doing so to critique science. Moreover, contemporary historians tell us the conflict thesis that religion was hostile to and opposed science for its history is false and discredited.
But you continue to peddle it despite the wealth of evidenced against it.
Reading more of the comments from ‘Ken’ I am starting to strongly suspect that he is not an actual person. At least not a human person.
Matt – where have I said (as you claim) “that one should not believe in anything unless it is scientifically proven.”?
I certainly don’t maintain that position at all. Far from it. We can have all sorts of beliefs, and scientific hypotheses can incorporate such unproven beliefs, but of course testing and validation against reality is what separates the sheep from the goats. One is a dogmatist or worse to insist on a belief when it is shown not to accord with reality.
“Beliefs” and speculation play an extremely important role in science. But we also have the humility of usually accepting it when our beliefs are shown to be incorrect.
So you have misrepresented (or at the minimum misunderstood) me. However, I find this sort of misrepresentation is quite common for those who oppose scientific thinking or don’t understand scientific epistemology and the nature of scientific knowledge.
The huge problem with theology and religious philosophy is it’s ignoring of, or opportunist attitude to, reality. It’s attempt to change reality to fit into preconceived religious ideas and claims. Your distortion if human ethical attitudes us one example – and it amounts to nothing more than naive Christian chauvinism.
You guys gave a real problem with reality hence you dishonest arguments and “logic” and your propensity to misrepresent.
Ken and Matt:
Everytime I check in on this page you two are having the same debate over and over and not getting anywhere!
🙂
Every time I see Ken going at it, it’s the same old same old. Regardless of a person’s actually scientific beliefs or their beliefs about the scientific method, unless they happen to march lock-step with Ken, they are automatically and lazily characterized by Ken as “anti-science.”
It’s pretty much the only card he thinks he has to play, so he plays it all the time. Never mind that he’s always incorrect, and usually obviously so. he just says it anyway. If you don’t agree with Ken about epistemology or religion, then you’re anti science. End of story.
Aba – this is as one would expect when there are irreconcilable differences of starting point and world view. However, all is not lost because even then the participants, and sometimes even onlookers, can learn something in the process. I usually do.
But what about you contributing? You might have the argument which convinces everyone.
Pity to hide it!
Ken,
still displaying a simpleton’s logic I see; First your calibration thesis fails to take into account that certain actions considered morally reprehensible were justified using social scientific studies outside of the bible; Using phrenology, physiological differences found in superficial comparisons between criminals and normal humans to condemn people as ‘genetic’ losers fit only for rehabilitation or slavery. Weikart’s book “Darwin to Hitler” summarizes evolutionists like Ernst Haeckel contributions to the Nazi Pure Race theory used to justify the holocaust over the Jews. If they have such an interpretation of their moral oughts as justified with their reading of evolution and science, why condemn them for it Ken?, if they have a different measurement of morals than you, despite the both of you having common ground in evolution and the importance of science
Long ago if you were a scientist in the 18th-19th century, you would agree with the collective wisdom that Europeans are superior in every way against inferior asiatic cultures by virtue of their civilization, its true because majority of social scientists, biologists and anthropologists believe so, since that’s the reality of the day.
btw, you’re seeing things that aren’t there. I didn’t mention calibration. I’m just indulging in your own delusional fantasy.
Also ken, secularity can be exclusive as they were two kinds that came out in two revolutions, american and french. The american one is the positive; religion is still relevant in society as one of sources of consciential thought and lifestyle vs the negative exclusivist one set up by atheists Jacobins in france, the latter of which was endorsed by Hilter, Stalin and Mao. This means that religion has no place in the public sector and is either condemned to destruction or upheld as control and puppet to the secular state.
Matt agrees with positive secularity as do I in so far as it provides a neutral ground of agreement or disagreement between believers and those who don’t, like me or you Ken. But it does not provide a sense of belonging characterized by those in a religion or family group (e.g. Hajj pilgrimage, Taize community) It can only accommodate cross-purpose unity akin to people congregating in a pub during world cup soccer, you might think that they’re all in one group united in their interest of the game, but come next monday, unity has fizzled and each one goes back to routine. Secularism binds people together in interests but not in purpose nor in vision, not the way religion and family does.
You also forgot the other side of the picture Ken, there’s been non-believers looking to aspects of religious practices to add some spice to the flatness of their lives, like hinduism’s yoga, buddha’s meditative practices particularly Sam Harris who thinks that their some merit to the practice despite his condemnation of superstition.
The way you talk Ken makes it sound that you support the negative side to secularity as pointed out by Matt that you are solipsist and a chauvinist as well by treating religionists as stunted inferiors, opportunists and blind fanatics in spite of you praising positive secularism’s inclusiveness. I guess, your mind works like that of a sleazy politician then.
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