Does our Morality come from our DNA?
Frank, is out of town for a week and has honored me by asking me to post a few blogs in his absence. My name is Neil Mammen, I consider myself a pop-apologist. I see my evening job as taking complex apologetic concepts, and simplifying it such that lay people can take timeless truths and rational arguments and use it in their daily discussions around the water cooler or class.
During the day, I design systems, circuits, ASICs and FPGAs as an engineer in Silicon Valley. I’ve done a lot of work in Video and Networking with about 4 startup companies and a few patents in my background. I grew up in Africa and the Middle East speaking Arabic and spent a lot of my younger life traveling and living around the world.
If you wish to read some of my other writings, and see a picture of the most gorgeous woman in the world (my wife) go over to my website www.NoBlindFaith.com or www.RationalFreeThinker.com.
The Background
A few months ago I was lucky enough be able to get one of the few non-student tickets to the Chris Hitchens vs. Jay Richards debate in a very crowded auditorium at Stanford University. Ben Stein of Expelled fame was moderating. Now for the sake of full disclosure I have to disclose that Jay Richards is a friend of mine so it makes sense that I’d be biased towards thinking he decimated Chris in the debate. However, you may find it interesting to note that even the founder of the “Atheists of Silicon Valley” agreed that Jay won the debate that day.
I would summarize the debate as such:
Jay: Here’s the evidence for the existence of God. (Lists the Moral, Telelogical, etc)
Chris: I hate religious people. Ad hominems, ad hominems, ad hominems, Mormons are weird and sick (goes off on some other unrelated issues)
Jay: We are not talking about Mormons? Let me expand on my previous arguments. (expands on it, does not take the ad Hominem bait)
Chris: Ad hominems, ad hominems, ad hominems, I have large sexual organs (seriously but uses the 4 letter words a juvenile would use). Religious people have killed lots of people.
Jay: Actually that’s not true (lists why, then provides more information on the previous arguments).
Chris: I have great sexual abilities, my male organ is humongous (says it the 7th grade way again). Jay do you actually believe in the Resurrection and the Virgin birth.
Jay: Yes I do.…. By the way do notice who has been throwing out insults and not really answering any of my arguments.
Chris: Why are you whining about me insulting you. More ad homimes. I live for sex and have lots of kids.
And so the debate ended.
Seriously, that was it. OK OK for a more detailed report see the link at the bottom of this entry by a journalist who attended.
The encounter and the Claim
After the debate was over I went over to chat with Jay. He was busy at first talking to some of the organizers. But up on stage were a couple of Chris’s fellow atheists; one was sporting a very faded “Atheist of Silicon Valley” t-shirt (not the founder noted above).
They seemed to be a in a bad mood and it turned out that they felt that Chris had let them down and not dealt with any of the arguments properly. I’m not sure why they were so antagonistic (sour grapes maybe) but they seemed to want to attack everyone after they attacked Chris for being incompetent. Chris of course refused to talk with them and ran off, probably to meet some of his like minded Stanford professors. I wasn’t going to play since I avoid debating with upset people whenever I can help it. What the point of a friendly discussion if it’s neither friendly nor a discussion?
In those cases, I merely ask questions and register their responses. For some reason that seemed to irritate them more.
One of the statements they made was that “morals don’t come from a “god”, they come from our DNA.” My first question was: Wait, if that’s the case then why do we DO “immoral” things.
The retort back was: Don’t interrupt me! I didn’t say that we are slaves to our DNA, did I (as you can see he was a bit touchy).
“Oh”, I said. “Interesting. I’ll have to think about that.”
Let’s think about this
So now I’ve had time to think about it. It doesn’t seem to make sense, nor does it seem rational. Let me see if I can state the problems I’m having.
First, understand that this was said in the context of the standard moral arguments that had already been made. i.e.
- You can’t say something is actually wrong without an absolute moral standard and
- You can’t have an absolute moral standard unless there was an absolute moral standard giver.
But
- The absolute moral standard giver has to be someone who has authority over all mankind, as anything else would merely be a cultural value or a preference and wouldn’t be “actually” wrong.
As I put it:
If there is NO absolute moral standard, why was Hitler wrong?
If there IS an absolute moral standard, why do YOU get to decide what that is and not Hitler?
OK given all that, you can see why an atheist may find DNA as a source of morality appealing.
But here’s the problem I see with the DNA theory: If DNA is the source of our morality then can anyone really say that something is ACTUALLY wrong? Why is slavery wrong? After all, for most of the history of the human race, the majority of the human race and human cultures have felt and believed that slavery was acceptable (as long as THEY weren’t the slaves).
Even Africans have had slaves (and still do in Sudan where I grew up), and from what I understand of Native American cultures, they had slaves of other tribes, so did South Americans. In the Indian subcontinent, the concept of discrimination and pseudo slavery still exists in the caste system. And even if you were to find a few exceptions to the rule, you could not argue that a majority of the civilizations in history thought slavery was immoral. So you would have no basis to imagine that any group had DNA that was prompting them to think slavery was bad.
It wasn’t until the 1800’s when a group of (non-enslaved) Christians decided that slavery was immoral and just as importantly, had ALWAYS been immoral. But this was based on what they claimed was a law from God. These religious freaks were so convicted of this that they convinced William Wilberforce to work to change the British laws and ban slavery. This movement came to the states with Christians and the Quakers agitating for freedom for all mankind and eventually to the birthing of the Republican party and the freeing of the slaves in the US.
Note this later resulted in the Civil Rights movement that allowed me to legally marry my gorgeous wife less than four decades years later.
So the question is: Did everyone’s DNA suddenly change in the late 1800’s? How can one fathom such a physical change? Note it seems to me that it’s not sufficient for a few influential people to “feel” slavery was wrong. DNA is a physical thing, and it’s only passed on by direct physical inheritance. Thus it seems to me that the only way an anti-slavery moral value could be passed on would be to one’s kids. But that concept sounds ludicrous, for that would mean, one person would believe slavery was wrong through some genetic drift or mutation (an abnormal event) and he would pass that “conviction” down to his offspring. This belief would also have to allow those who believed in slavery being wrong to survive better than the slave owners, and eventually those who believed slavery was wrong would become predominant in the population and they would then change the laws and thus the culture or vice versa. But anyone would imagine that oppressing some other culture and forcing them to work for you can only be economically prosperous and advantageous to having larger families. I.e. if I own slaves and have lots of free labor, I can have more kids and they will be richer than those poor genetic freaks whose DNA has made them think having free slaver labor is somehow immoral. Or even those poor self-righteous religious freaks who think all men have rights from some non-existent God.
Another Problem
And that’s just one problem. Another problem is seems is that if the moral code is written into our DNA, doesn’t that appear to refute evolution. After all the moral code seems to go expressly against the concept of selfish self preservation and survival of the fittest. Of course one could argue that our DNA has evolved in the last 6000 years of human civilization so now we “need” to be kind, sacrificial and share to survive. But that still doesn’t explain why sacrificing oneself for the sake of others who are not even related to you is of value. After all if as Dawkins has said, the gene is selfish, how selfish can a gene be if it’s willing to die to save the life of other people’s offspring. And how does that gene then get passed on. It would seem that the DNA of the people who survive would be the DNA that says DO NOT sacrifice your life for anybody but your own offspring.
So I’m curious how the DNA argument can stand. I’m open to suggestions. After all I could be wrong and could have missed something.
[For a journalist’s review of the Richards Hitchins debate go here:
I do not know the journalist, but coincidentally the insightful and articulate person he quotes toward the end of the review, with the last name Mammen is indeed my wife.]
“You can’t say something is actually wrong without an absolute moral standard.”
Of course if your fundamental premise is wrong, your argument is not going to impress anyone.
Absolutely. We agree.
So the question naturally is:
CAN we say something is actually wrong without a standard?
It seems like we can say that we don’t PREFER it. Or we can say that we don’t LIKE it. But can we say that it is actually wrong?
As far as your understanding of the “selfish gene” goes, I’m thoroughly convinced you haven’t read Dawkins’s book. The concept of the “selfish gene” is a rather complicated one, that certainly can’t be covered in entirety here. I was going to try to type out a response to your question about people who sacrifice themselves for others, but I got part way into it and then realized I really need to get some sleep and if I kept typing I’d probably be at it another 45 minutes. The best thing I can recommend is reading “The Selfish Gene” itself, chapter 6 “genesmanship,” in particular covers the aforementioned subject, while chapter 4 (i think) covers, in a general sense, your concerns about morality and how human conceptualization of what is moral has changed over time.
In short, genes merely program our brains, which are essentially extremely complex biological computers. Our brains of course, are what actually carry out our actions. Our genes aren’t directly responsible for any of our behaviors, it is the “computers” for which the form the hardware that are responsible for those actions. To venture my own analogy, I think it would be fair to say that our genes are the hardware of our brains (and the rest of our bodies), and as we grow, our experiences essentially write the software by which we operate.
That’s a simple explanation. I really recommend the book though. My crude explanations don’t really do it justice.
Jjberg,
You got me. I read that book probably over a quarter of a century ago. And then too only an atheist friend’s copy. I heard that Dawkins came up with a new edition later, but never read that one.
Yet I think you may have missed my fundamental points (in fact if you look you’ll see that the selfish gene was only referred to in passing):
1. Unless we can explain a way that the morality within our DNA can suddenly cause entire unrelated populations to change their moral values, how can we credit our DNA with the moral value.
2. Based on this I then ask, if the immorality of Slavery was in our DNA then why didn’t it show up until the 1800’s? And even more critical: If it didn’t come into our DNA until the 1800’s, was slavery moral until the 1800’s?
3. If morality is in our DNA wouldn’t moral values that recommend self sacrifice eventually extinct themselves as those with the self sacrifice DNA would die off and not procreate as much as those who did not have the self sacrifice genes. (I realize that you said this was answered in Dawkin’s book and I forgot it – If you can summarize your or Dawkin’s response to the above I’d be naturally very interested. It maybe a while before I get the chance to acquire a copy of his book.)
Again I may have misunderstood the slightly upset atheist, it was after all a 5 minute one way conversation.
It seems to me that it is relevant to note that the Christian concept of man says that rather than morality coming from our DNA, IMMORALITY comes from our DNA. That is we are born with a sin nature. Our “natural” DNA makes us less sacrificial, self centered, self loving, self aggrandizing and selfish.
Look at a 1-2 year old child. Does the child share, love, give and care about others naturally? (I have a darling precocious cute 16 month old, so I speak from experience). Or is their DNA programmed rather to see the world as existing just for them. What do we teach a 16 month old? Be kind, be gentle, don’t hit, don’t scream when you don’t get your own way, share. What is natural is not automatically good.
Thus in many ways it seems that morality is actually society’s way of over riding what is genetically coded into us. What do we call a child that has never been corrected or taught? A spoiled brat.
Now I realize that immediately evolutionists will say: Well that’s because if the child stayed spoiled they’d never pass on their genes. But this does not seem true as I then wonder why do spoiled brat genes still exist in the gene pool? Why didn’t they get eliminated?
I’d be interested to see if anyone has contrary evidence.
Noted. I just responded to your comments on The Selfish Gene because it’s very fresh in my mind and I could respond quickly. I didn’t have a whole lot of time and don’t have much right now either. I’ll try to respond to your other points later.
Just a note on Neil’s comments.
If morality comes from God and slavery is immoral, why didn’t Jesus speak out against slavery? Every indication in the New Testament seems to indicate that Jesus was OK with slavery.
Actually, that is not accurate. If you look at the Old Testament slaves were set free after a time and had the choice to stay if they chose. The slavery talked about in the Jewish system is not representative of the slavery experienced where people are owned for their life time without a choice.
Response to Kendenny:
Jesus did speak out against slavery. He says it rather plainly in Matthew 7:12; does he not? Would you want to be treated as a slave?
“CAN we say something is actually wrong without a standard?”
What is the definition of “morality”?
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/
I’m more into “science”. I don’t worry much about philosophy. I don’t think I believe in an “absolute” moral standard. But I think I do believe in a “relative” moral standard.
I avoid a lot of actions because there are laws in this country and there are penalties for actions that are contrary to those laws. And I do perform some actions which might be called “altruistic” (definition?) because I want to. Perhaps I could be even more “altruistic”. How would that fit into your “absolute” moral standard?
So James, slavery is not immoral unless it is lifelong?
Pop. I suppose you could interpret the Golden Rule as being against slavery, but everywhere Jesus speaks about slavery directly it is evident that he viewed it as an accepted part of the culture.
Kendenny,
I never made the claim that slavery was only immoral if it is lifelong. I was just explaining that the definition for slavery being talked about was not what was talked about in the old testament. Take for example what is said in Deuteronomy 15:12 – 17
12(A) “If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold[a] to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you. 13And when you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty-handed. 14You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress.(B) As the LORD your God has blessed you, you shall give to him. 15(C) You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today. 16But(D) if he says to you, ‘I will not go out from you,’ because he loves you and your household, since he is well-off with you, 17then you shall take an awl, and put it through his ear into the door, and he shall be your slave forever. And to your female slave you shall do the same.
Also, slavery was not restricted to any specific race. People would sell themselves into slavery when they could not pay their debts or provide for their family.
In other words I was just asserting that your understanding of slavery is based on recent examples of discrimination against a certain people group and not the slavery system that is presented in the bible.
I made no claim to morality or immorality on the issue in my last post.
James is quite correct. There was the slavery that we associate the word with and there was the slavery that was essentially indentured service due to debts owed. The latter is similar to what we have today when you have a debt and the person you owe the money to has the government garnish your wages until such a time as you have paid back your debts. The former is basically that you have no rights.
There are also a few other verses in the Bible besides the ones that James has so appropriately quoted:
1. A specific commandment against what was being done to the African slaves has existed in the Hebrew moral code since the foundation of the Hebrews as a nation. Exodus 16:21
Which basically says that any man who kidnaps another and sells him shall be put to death.
The slaver traders violated this completely. Those who bought the slaves thus kidnapped were complicit in this sin.
2. Then there is Galatians 3:28: “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one.” Which further limits Christians from treating others as slaves or being slaves owners. One could argue that this means Christians can’t have Christians as slaves. But this doesn’t work because anyone can then just call themselves a Christian and his Christian master has to let him go. And secondly this verse in History has been one of the motivations for Christians to fight slavery all over the world. This was also the motivation to fight racism and discrimination.
3. And of course the “Love your neighbor as yourself”, covers loving your neighbor even if he or she wasn’t a Christian.
But I think the key issue here is NOT whether Jesus spoke out against slavery or not, because Jesus’ ministry was only for 3 years. Certainly we can rationally agree that there was no way that he’d be able to speak out against ALL specific issues, but secondly he may have indeed spoken out against it, but his disciples may not have recorded that (there’s more to this if you believe in the Inspiration of the Bible but we’ll leave it at that for now). Suffice it to say that we are left with general principles in most cases. For instance he did not say that it is wrong to violate a traffic law, or cheat at poker, or even gamble for that matter. Rather he taught us general principles that we can derive basic values from as long as it logically follows from the general principle.
Remember the law and a moral value is not capricious, there are reasons why the law is the law or the moral value is a “value” (i..e it has some value). We don’t really create the law or a moral value we usually discover them. Frank has written extensively about this in his book called “Legislating Morality”.
But you may ask why wasn’t slavery important enough for Jesus to talk about it in the 3 years that he was here. Or why wasn’t it important enough for the Apostles to document it if Jesus did talk about it?
Perhaps it was because the basic principles of salvation from eternal separation from God for the entire world was deemed to be a bit more worthy of the time and effort available. And perhaps it was known by Christ that true followers of his would eventually have their consciences affected by the Holy Spirit and in time strive towards true Godly morality.
More later.
Some questions from the other blog reposted here:
May 5th, 2008 at 1:09 pm edit
Wes,
Thanks for your thoughtful posts [posted at:http://crossexamined.thehuntercreative.com/?p=54#comment-844 . A couple of questions on your basis for morality in humanity: Whose humanity: Mother Teresa’s or Hitler’s?
If you say “for the good of society,” it seems to me you are begging the question by smuggling in an objective standard of “good.” Where does this standard come from? (Note: I’m not asking you HOW YOU KNOW murder is wrong, but WHY is murder wrong.)
Blessings
Frank Turek
# Neil Mammen Says:
May 5th, 2008 at 1:20 pm edit
To add to Frank and Ernie’s comments. Remember Physical Death is not our final destiny.
If God exists, we should not view death from an Atheist’s perspective and expect it to make sense from a Christian or God’s perspective. Death to an atheist means annihilation, nothingness. It’s all over. Death in God’s eyes is merely the transportation of a being trapped in a limited 4D space and shell to a multidimensional space (the spiritual dimension). The person STILL exists, just not in the physical dimension. But remember after death, the Christian view is that they are STILL the same person, the same being. They’ve just lost their shell that used to limit them. It’s like losing a full body cast in some ways. So many more dimensions are now open to them. They’ve been set free and had their limited vision opened up.
Another example: To God, a human dying is loosely akin to someone being picked up out of their car and ending up on an other planet with far more dimensions and things than they could ever imagine. Meanwhile their empty rotting car (with no one to maintain it) is left behind for people to mourn over.
So while you may not believe it is true, at least conceptually it is self consistent that killing to God is not wrong though it is wrong to you. But you ask well does that mean I can go around killing people. After all I’m “freeing” them. Well no, it’s like a child and his friends (those left behind) crying because the child’s parents dragged him away from playing in the sewer with the friends and took him to the beach (to borrow from CS Lewis). However the parents are the ONLY ones who have permission to take him to the beach. If the creepy next door neighbor takes him to the beach without permission that’s wrong.
I’m not asking you to believe that God’s perspective is true at this point, I’m just hoping you can see that it’s self consistent in this area. (OK at least it seems self consistent to me. So if you think it isn’t I’d be interested to know why – though do remember all analogies fail at some point, so don’t feel that these analogies extend to gasoline or doors or air bags : ) ).
# Dave Says:
May 5th, 2008 at 2:39 pm edit
FRANK:
If you say “for the good of society,” it seems to me you are begging the question by smuggling in an objective standard of “good.” Where does this standard come from? (Note: I’m not asking you HOW YOU KNOW murder is wrong, but WHY is murder wrong.)
DAVE:
Let me save you a bit of typing, Frank. Wes, assuming he returns, is going to give a moral reason why murder is wrong. From that you are going to derive a system (or partial system) of morality. You will then critique that system — and if you’re like most Christians I know, you will do so on the basis that it lacks a means of cosmic enforcement. You will conclude that atheism, insofar as it relies on that moral system, is therefore flawed.
Two problems. First, cosmic enforcement is not necessary for the soundness of a moral system; if a criminal is never apprehended or even identified by law enforcement, that does not mean that no crime has been committed. Second, atheism does not rely upon that, or any, moral system. “Mere atheism” does not take any position at all on morality, except insofar as it denies systems of morality which necessitate the existence of a god — and with excellent reason, as it happens, but that’s for another post.
NEIL:
I’m not asking you to believe that God’s perspective is true at this point, I’m just hoping you can see that it’s self consistent in this area. (OK at least it seems self consistent to me. So if you think it isn’t I’d be interested to know why – though do remember all analogies fail at some point, so don’t feel that these analogies extend to gasoline or doors or air bags : ) ).
DAVE:
Self-consistency is a trivial matter for any set of propositions, including the set which constitutes a theistic worldview; one need only add and/or subtract propositions, as needed, to remove any logical contradictions. For example, in response to the logical argument from suffering, the Christian can avoid contradiction by subtracting one of the following propositions from his worldview:
1) God is all-powerful.
2) God is all-knowing.
3) God is all-loving.
4) Suffering exists.
5) Logic obtains.
Of course, arguing against 5 is self-defeating, and arguing against 4 is a sure sign of lunacy, so Christians will usually respond by arguing against 1, 2 or 3 — although they will usually mask it in the guise of a theodicy, “free will” or somesuch. If you want to call a being without 1, 2 or 3 “God,” then I can’t really argue against that — there are people whose call their toasters God. But I would respectfully disagree.
# Neil Mammen Says:
May 5th, 2008 at 3:03 pm edit
Dave,
That’s fine. As long as you see that the Biblical concept of death and killing is self consistent.
As to your changing the topic to a new one, you have merely restated the “How can God exist when their is so much suffering and evil in the word?” question.
In light of that, we end up back at Frank’s question, which I don’t think your responded to adequately. If we are just accidentally well evolved cells and if as you say ““Mere atheism” does not take any position at all on morality,” then why is murder/evil/suffering wrong? What standard do you have to say that it’s bad or wrong. What is your basis for insisting it’s wrong. Was Hitler evil or wrong? If so why?
Dave,
I’m trying to understand your objection:
Are you really saying this:
Christians claim God is their morality but their moral values are inconsistent with a supreme moral authority in light of evil and suffering existing, while atheists have no moral standard except for their own preferences so atheists are self consistent?
Neil
I recommend the book “Have the Atheists Proved There Is No God” by Dr.Thomas B. Warren. A very logical, precise argument dealing with the so-called problem of evil.
In Truth and Love,
Ernie
Kendenny,
True, Jesus didn’t speak DIRECTLY against slavery. But Jesus didn’t directly speak against wife-beating either, but I doubt he was for it. Seems to me that “do unto others” handles slavery as well as many other things you are against.
Earlier you said murder is wrong because it would end society if everyone practiced it. But why is ending society objectively wrong? And slavery could actually advance society. So on what grounds do you think slavery is objectively wrong?
Blessings,
Frank Turek
Frank,
I’d like to ask you first to provide how you know that there is some ultimate objective moral standard. You are essentially assuming that morality isn’t simply a construct of intelligent minds (however, that is not to say that it is not valid). In order to ask on what grounds we know something is objectively wrong you must first have evidence that there even exists an objective (as in, above humans) moral standard.
Yeah, “do unto others” does seem to cover an awful lot doesn’t it. Seems to me like all those other pages are just a waste of trees.
“
The [problem is that he did not speak against slavery and the bible was wonderfully ambiguous on the matter. At times seemingly promoting it and at other condemning it.
db0 I think James answered that objection in a prior post. I.e .while Jesus did not address it by name he implied it clearly by his commandments and the Bible is not ambiguous when taken in the context of indentured service and kidnapping as we stated.
Meanwhile it seems that all atheists are avoiding this question, I presume it’s because you forgot it was asked and not that you don’t have an answer:
What is your basis for calling something good or bad? How do you tell the difference?
We’ve been focusing on other issues for a while on this blog. I’m still wondering are there any atheists out there that wish to argue for the fact that our morality comes from our DNA.
If not I’d like to know where our standard of morality comes from or if there even IS a standard.
Certainly DNA plays a role in our morality. Our environment also plays a role. Just like every aspect of our selves, it’s determined by a combination of DNA and environment.
Thanks for that. Can we go further. How do you determine if action A is wrong and action B right?
An action is right if everyone involved benefits. It is wrong if someone is harmed.
Kendenny, Can we break that down, I realize you were just stating a basic over riding premise, so I think you’d want to expand it, as I see a few problems with only this premise.
1. Who says that’s the standard? A white supremacist may say that it’s right if it advances the white race at the expense of any other race, Louis Farrakhan and the Black Liberation folks like Obama’s church will say it’s right if it advances the black race even at the expense of the whites. Who get’s to choose?
2. And what if a few people have to suffer for the good of the many? That doesn’t work if EVERYONE has to be benefitted?
3. The next question is who is everyone and someone? Hitler felt that that did not include Jews, America in pre1800 feel that that didn’t include slaves, Muslims in the land where I grew up (Sudan) f eel that that doesn’t include black Christians.
~~~~Ken said:
An action is right if everyone involved benefits. It is wrong if someone is harmed.~~~~
Interesting. So self defense, especially in the case where the one defending kills the attacker, is wrong because the attacker does not benefit (in the extreme case, he dies).
But a conscious choice NOT to defend yourself is ALSO wrong because that choice leads to a situation were someone is harmed…yourself.
If I am attacked, I am wrong either way I choose: defend self or not defend self. Either way puts me in a position of choosing that which is wrong because someone is harmed by either choice.
In Truth and Love,
Ernie
Kendenny,
“Benefits” presupposes a moral standard. DNA and environment, at best, can only tell us HOW WE KNOW something is moral or immoral, but cannot establish WHY something is moral or immoral. How can chemicals establish right and wrong? Why do we have a moral obligation to chemicals?
I’ve asked this before but no atheist has offered a direct answer: “How can an immaterial objective standard of morality exist in an atheistic world comprised of only chemicals?”
Blessings,
Frank Turek
Neil says: “Who says that’s the standard?” Society says that’s the standard.
Then: “And what if a few people have to suffer for the good of the many?” As long as they volunteer to suffer for the good of the many it’s OK. If some people are forced to suffer fot the good of the many then it’s still wrong.
Finally: “The next question is who is everyone and someone?” Everyone means everyone.
Ernie says: “If I am attacked, I am wrong either way I choose: defend self or not defend self. Either way puts me in a position of choosing that which is wrong because someone is harmed by either choice.”
In any situation where someone is going to suffer no matter which choice is made, the persom making the choice must choose the option which causes the least suffering. If someone is getting ready to shoot you, it is better to take away his gun rather than kill him.
Frank says: ““Benefits” presupposes a moral standard.”
No it doesn’t. “Enough food is preferable to starvation” doesn’t require a moral standard.
Then: “DNA and environment, at best, can only tell us HOW WE KNOW something is moral or immoral, but cannot establish WHY something is moral or immoral.”
I sorry but I can’t discern a difference between “How we know” and “Why”.
Then: “I’ve asked this before but no atheist has offered a direct answer: “How can an immaterial objective standard of morality exist in an atheistic world comprised of only chemicals?””
They can and do. They evolved because we are social animals. Social animals require standards of behavior toward one another in order to survive. And yes, survival being a good thing is self-evident. Anyone who can’t see that is not living in the same universe as me and therefore any attempt at communication between us is futile.
And Frank. To my way of thinking “because we couldn’t survive without it” is a far better answer to the question “Why?” than “because God said so.”
Frank says: ““Benefits” presupposes a moral standard.”
No it doesn’t. “Enough food is preferable to starvation” doesn’t require a moral standard.
Either it requires a moral standard, or you’re arguing for mere preference to rule, which ultimately leads to rule by the most powerful; to wit, I can garner enough military force to override your particular preferences, so my preferences rule. Might makes right. Nice.
Any objection to the above posits a moral system that goes beyond the mere preference of the actors.
A preference which is shared by every human on the planet rises to the level of a standard.
I sorry but I can’t discern a difference between “How we know” and “Why”.
“How we know” addresses the manner in which we apply the moral standard.
“Why” addresses where the moral standard comes from.
A preference which is shared by every human on the planet rises to the level of a standard.
No, a preference that is expressed by every human on the planet rises to the level of a common characteristic of the species. All chickens also prefer living to dying; that doesn’t make eating chickens “wrong,” just rather an unwelcome turn for that individual chicken.
Ken,
You keep changing your definitions. At one point you say:
~~~~An action is right if everyone involved benefits. It is wrong if someone is harmed.~~~~
Then when confronted with a scenario where this definition produces a contradiction you adjust to:
~~~~Right is that “which causes the least suffering.”~~~~
Then you switch back to the standard of everyone in your last post.
While I appreciate you demonstrating so vividly the concept of subjective morality, you still need to answer the question as it regards an OBJECTIVE standard.
How do you determine if action A is wrong and action B right?
Is action B right if ALL or just a MAJORITY of people benefit from/prefer that action? Is action A wrong if it harms even ONE person or just a MAJORITY?
In Truth and Love,
Ernie
I know I posted this on a different thread, but I don’t remember which one it was and I got busy and never checked back for an answer, so if it’s been offered please just link me there or copy and paste it over.
I think you are all presupposing the existence of a universal immaterial moral standard. You are making the assumption that morality is somehow ingrained in the fabric of the universe, above the realm of human existence. In order to ask where such a standard comes from you must first demonstrate that it exists on that level.
I would contend that morality is a construct of intelligent minds. We have reached the point in neuroscience that we can locate physically within the brain the region that governs morality. Certainly there is some degree of universal moral standard, but I don’t think there is any question that it is human in nature. In your terms Neil, it “comes from our DNA,” although I think that is a vast oversimplification of the issue. Different cultures all over the world have very different ideas of what is moral, indicating that environmental influences play a big role in the development of morality.
Thank you JJ. You expressed what I wanted to say more eloquently than I could.
So we are back to this:
If there is no absolute morality why was Hitler wrong? If there IS an absolute morality why do YOU get to decide what it is and not Hitler?
Why do the masses get to determine what is good and not the most intelligent (or self proclaimed most intelligent)? Who is the most intelligent, how do we determine that?
My morality is superior to Hitler’s because my morality results in greater benefit to a greater number of people.
But then that means Hitler was not ACTUALLY wrong. Is that what you are saying? Can you say Hitler was WRONG or Hitler was evil? Or is all that you can say is that you don’t prefer what Hitler did?
Of course Hitler was wrong and evil. Hitler’s actions caused tremendous amounts of suffering. That’s not a matter of preference, that’s evil.
Happiness is better than misery is not simply a preference, it is an absolute.
Life is better than death is not simply a preference, it is an absolute.
And no God is necessary to tell us that these things are absolute.
If you look at it from Hitler’s viewpoint, this was the best thing for the human race. “Who has the right to judge? Short term suffering for the human race now, healthier humans later.”
How can we say something is evil unless we have a standard? Does that standard change? If the Nazi’s had won the war and had dominated the world for 1000 years, we’d think Hitler was a noble person, purifier of the races. The majority would think he was a good man, the remaining majority would believe their heath was due to his work in weeding out the weak. Their preference would be do to so. Would he be a good man then?
Prior to Christ, unreturned compassion was minimal. No hospitals, no free charities, very little self sacrifice for those unrelated to you. If you’d asked people if it was good to sacrifice for others who could never repay you they’d say it was evil. Who was right? Has morality changed? Was it right to be selfish then and bad now?
Kendenny
I wrote: “DNA and environment, at best, can only tell us HOW WE KNOW something is moral or immoral, but cannot establish WHY something is moral or immoral.”
You wrote: I’m sorry but I can’t discern a difference between “How we know” and “Why”.
Think about it this way” You may KNOW the times tables because your mother taught them to you, but WHY 3X3=9 has nothing to do with how you know it or whether you know it . Likewise, murder is wrong regardless of how or whether you know it.
But WHY is murder wrong in an atheistic world. How are we morally obligated to anyone if there is no anyone– if we are all just chemicals?
You also wrote: “And yes, survival being a good thing is self-evident. Anyone who can’t see that is not living in the same universe as me and therefore any attempt at communication between us is futile.”.
What do YOU mean by “good?” Suppose Hitler thinks your survival is not good? If there is no supreme personal being to adjudicate between human beings (you and Hitler), it is just your opinion against his.
Blessings,
Frank Turek
To be honest, I’ve always been a little confused about the intent of making this argument. Is the point to demonstrate that we couldn’t have a moral standard without God, and we do have a moral standard—therefore God? Or is it that you can’t really be moral unless you believe in God? I’ve always thought it was the former, but I’m not sure.
Anyways, I question what you mean by “ACTUALLY wrong.” If by “actually wrong” you mean that it is wrong in some cosmic absolute sense, the no, I guess it is not “actually wrong,” but this does not at all preclude it from being wrong in a human sense, which is what really matters. Normal human beings have something called empathy. When we are confronted with a situation where we have to make a moral decision about how to treat another person, we put ourselves in their position and imagine how we would feel if we were treated as such. We recognize that they are a human being with feelings just like us, and that they will be forced to endure some degree of pain or suffering if we proceed. We know that we would not want anyone to do that to us, so we don’t do it to them. It’s really that simple.
JJ,
It is the former. Of course people who don’t believe in God can be moral. But as this post is showing, they just can’t JUSTIFY an objective standard of morality.
Your post above is giving one test (do unto others. . .) for identifying HOW YOU KNOW what is moral, but it does nothing to tell us WHY something is moral (sorry for the caps– I’m not shouting, I just don’t have italics in this post). Again, if only humans exist, then it’s just your opinion against Hitler’s or Bin Laden’s.
Blessings,
Frank
But I’m a bit confused, using your standard, it seems that unless there is a universal empathy for the killing of the Jews (which there still sadly isn’t) using your standard, killing the Jews was not wrong.
So why was Hitler evil then? Your own standard says it was not wrong. How about racism. Over 3B people still think racism is OK (most Arabs, most Indians, lots of Chinese, many whites). Is racism wrong or not? There’s no universal empathy. If you don’t like my numbers today then go back to the 1800′s. No Universal Empathy then. So who decides? (and was it good then and suddenly became evil now). Who decides? You or Hitler? It’s a dilemma it seems that exists if all moral values come from men.
Neil,
Everyone (who is wired like a normal human being, ie nearly all of us) has feelings of empathy. The problem is that we selectively apply them. Therein lies the great flaw in our biologically developed morality. We feel empathy for others only so long as we identify them as “one of us.” Undoubtedly Hitler saw the jews as something less than human, or some lower form of human. If you dehumanize someone else, your sense of morality simply doesn’t kick in. You don’t empathize with them because you don’t imagine them having the same feelings or qualities that you do. In a darwinian sense, empathy and altruism play an extremely important role in passing along genes e.g. mother’s genes are preserved in offspring, even if she dies protecting them, her genes are passed down, including particularly the ones that gave her the predisposition towards protecting them. It’s much more complex than that though, (for example, this behavior is not at all restricted to the parent-offspring relationship), so I’d refer you again to Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene. Just as important though, was the need to have no empathy whatsoever for those who were different. Early in human development, you can imagine that if two tribes met, the one that distrusted the other more would be likely to survive, likely because of war, thus passing on the genes for distrust of people who are different.
Both of these instincts, empathy and distrust of people who are different, are hard wired into us. The problem then, of course, is how to convince people that there really aren’t people who are truly “different.”
I know I’ve only basically answer one specific example from your question, the one about why racism exists. I have a much more general answer, which should respond to both you and Frank, but I’m not sure how to put it into words, hopefully should be up tomorrow.
jjberg
As I was reading this, I wanted to thank you for your thoughtful and well articulated responses. We may never agree, but I do appreciate the healthy disagreements and discussions.
My morality is superior to Hitler’s because my morality results in greater benefit to a greater number of people.
I seem to be picking on KenDenny, but it’s not personal. My apologies, Ken.
Hitler makes the equation too simple, because there’s general agreement that the man was mad.
Let’s try the exercise using a different individual, whom we’ll call “A”. Individual A came from a far-east country to study at university in France. There, he came to believe Rationalism of a sort, and came also to believe that religion and tradition were barriers to humans actually coming to live reasonably and rationally. He resolved to return to his home country and create a completely just society, based entirely on principles of reason, and excluding all traces of tradition and religion from the past, a very Daniel Dennett-like approach.
We’re talking here about Pol Pot, and he did as he resolved to do; in order to eradicate religion, he had to kill the better part of a generation of his own countrymen.
Now, if he had succeeded in eradicating religion and establishing a completely just society that lasted 500 years, would the mass killings of a single generation of his countrymen have been justified? Would the suffering of what was clearly a large number of people justify the succeeding generations of peace and harmony?
I use this example because I think it illustrates the sort of macabre algebra that a utilitarian equation like KenDenny’s forces us to consider. The human soul conditioned by religions like Christianity rebel at the very exercise — and should. A Christian would say “No matter what might result from such an exercise, no leader has the right to murder even one of his citizens, let alone 3 million.”
Note that there are no atheists in this discussion whose sensibilities are not conditioned by having been raised in a culture conditioned by the Christian religion. Atheism, having no moral structure of its own, is a parasite religion, borrowing the moral structure from whichever culture in which it appears.
Plumb Bob said: “Now, if he had succeeded in eradicating religion and establishing a completely just society that lasted 500 years, would the mass killings of a single generation of his countrymen have been justified?”
Possibly except for one thing. You cannpt use injustice to bring about a just society, so there is no possibility that his plan could have succeeded.
But isn’t that begging the question? Why can’t you use injustice? And what is injustice? Is abortion injustice, not to bring about a discussion on abortion, but it shows the problem. For one group of people abortion solves a problem (over population, convenience, freedom, no consequences of sex), but another group says it’s killing a human and is injustice.
So first we have a definition problem. Who decides what is justice and isn’t that the basic argument we are having? Does our DNA decide what is justice or do the strong? Or if not whom?
The second problem is it seems that one day in the near future, one could theoretically wipe out large portions of the human population and use machinery to provide ample food and a comfortable life for those that remain. Would that make eradication of those others just? Especially since once the deed was done those who remained would be the majority and could arguably say, we all by consensus agree that that act was just. So it may not have been just before, but now it is just. And look at how happy anyone who is alive is.
And if you think about it, that has been the argument provided by Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin and so on. i.e. it takes breaking an egg to make an omelet. Eliminate those who would work against the state and we’ll have a perfect state.
So how do we arrive an at absolute moral value that we all seem to agree exists without appealing to either the strong, the remaining masses or the elite?
Now I realize that if I propose a supreme moral law giver you will have multiple objections:
1. Whose God is that? Allah, Yahweh, or which of the particualr Christian denominations?
2. What do we do when he doesn’t address specific laws? Make up our own, in which case how is that different from the atheistic vew?
3. But just because you feel you need a moral law giver, this doesn’t prove that God exists.
4. What about when different cultures disagree on certain moral issues like polygamy?
And these are valid objections. We will have to deal with them. But before I or anyone else do start responding to them, perhaps you could let us know if they are indeed the objections you have and if there are some more that I’ve missed.
“Kendenny Says:
May 14th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Of course Hitler was wrong and evil. Hitler’s actions caused tremendous amounts of suffering. That’s not a matter of preference, that’s evil.
Happiness is better than misery is not simply a preference, it is an absolute.
Life is better than death is not simply a preference, it is an absolute.
And no God is necessary to tell us that these things are absolute.
Neil Mammen Says:
May 14th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
If you look at it from Hitler’s viewpoint, this was the best thing for the human race. “Who has the right to judge? Short term suffering for the human race now, healthier humans later.”
How can we say something is evil unless we have a standard? Does that standard change? If the Nazi’s had won the war and had dominated the world for 1000 years, we’d think Hitler was a noble person, purifier of the races. The majority would think he was a good man, the remaining majority would believe their heath was due to his work in weeding out the weak. Their preference would be do to so. Would he be a good man then?
Prior to Christ, unreturned compassion was minimal. No hospitals, no free charities, very little self sacrifice for those unrelated to you. If you’d asked people if it was good to sacrifice for others who could never repay you they’d say it was evil. Who was right? Has morality changed? Was it right to be selfish then and bad now?”
I know we are speaking about Morality here, but another question is, what is evil? As Ken, points out his understanding is that Hitler was evil. Who told you Hitler was evil? If then, there is no God and we are just created from primordial soup and by chance we get here and we live by “Survival of the Fittest”.
Then if the weak aren’t able to defend themselves and the strong kill them, it isn’t evil, it’s just how it works. As they say today, “It’s just business.”.
But if we can’t define, what evil is, or what good is, then how can we tackle the morality issue as it places each opponent on each side. Giving a line not to cross.
I wanted to speak on the issue that JJ said, which I find as an untrue statement.
(Both of these instincts, empathy and distrust of people who are different, are hard wired into us. The problem then, of course, is how to convince people that there really aren’t people who are truly “different.”)
Distrust of people comes as a learned act, not an ingrained act. Look at a baby when it is born. And when a child grows up, it believes everything you tell it until it can learn to rationalize or gets hurt by some environmental or person’s actions and learns that they can’t trust that person or those types of people. But it is a learned thing, it is not DNA.
Trust & Distrust are learned behaviours. As the baby shows. It believes everything you tell it or teach it until, such point as it starts to learn for itself and then comes to self-realization or rational thinking. What you could say is we are born to Trust and we learned distrust as we go along. Now that might fly under scientific scrutiny, but not distrust from genes, or genetics.
But back to Morality, who defines it? I’ve heard that Group Think, decides. So Mob rules. This worked in Rome for a while, but ended in Anarchy. And then led to the dissolution of Rome. So this isn’t the natural state of being, Anarchy. Which is without rule. So we need rules, but who decides those rules? It seems today that Might makes Right. However, the Constitutional Republic of what the United States used to be, flies in the face of Might makes Right, as Majority doesn’t rule or didn’t rule in the US.
What did the founders of the US give their understanding to, for these rules and laws? Providence, or God. Now, the Constitutional Republic for the US, is the longest standing government based entirely on a Constitution. No other government has lasted 200 years, under one form of government consecutively.
But the Constitution looks out for the weaker as well as the majority. So, this comes back to Morality. Is it learned or is it genetic? God states in the Bible that He will write the law upon the tablets of our hearts. So morality seems to be written in our genetic code by this understanding and divine explanation. So everyone today and yesterday and in the future will have a moral code written genetically, however I think that environment will have a huge impact on how we carry these moral understandings out.
I think question is difficult to really answer. As Atheists say that Morality is DNA encoded and so does God. Jeremiah 31:33 “…I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
So both are right here. Morality, understanding of right and wrong, the law that says this is evil or good, is encoded in us. Now unfortunately we cannot prove God by this to an Atheist. Because he/she already has this born into them, genetically or DNA.
The question is, who do Atheists give credit for this “design”. They give chance, the credit and we as Christians give God the Creator of the Universe, Heaven and Earth, this credit. Muslim’s give Allah, credit. Buddhists give Buddha, credit. And so on and so forth.
So Atheists, god, in a sense of the word is reason, logic, and science. Our reason, logic and science shifts like the shifting sands unfortunately tho as we learn, we start to grasp another part of the bigger picture. And reason, & logic are created through learned principles and experience. So they are also skewed to that persons perception.
Accusation: There have been far more deaths in the world as a result of a lack of religion and belief in God or gods then there ever have been among people of faith.
Atheists’ answer: While that may be, those who did the killing and murder were not doing because they were atheists. It is because they were evil men. At the same time countless people have died at the hands of Christians and believers of other gods in the names of their gods.
Answer: Sometimes it is true that believers in different gods have killed in the name of their god while at other times they have killed and used their god’s approval as an excuse for killing, when all they wanted was to kill anyway. However, it should be noted that in the case of the atheistic world view, that the atheist believes in nothing more supreme than men. A man who believes himself above others and who sees no standards of morality may kill at will since he is already self-justified. It is precisely because he does not believe himself morally bound by a higher power or fear the moral consequences of going against that moral law that he feels no compulsion against killing to further his agenda. So it is a fact that atheism promotes a lack of moral accountability which leads to the very kind of killing that atheists condemn others for. Why condemn others anyway since each man is basically a law unto himself? Why accuse others of evil when they are really helping the survival of the fittest? If one of the core components of the theory of evolution is true, that being that natural selection weeds out the weak and leaves the fittest of the species and individuals within the species to dominate the earth, the atheist should not be seeking to run a way from the mass killings done by other atheists, they should be embracing them as heroes of evolution. Survival of the fittest is what they stand for. So why the hypocritical condemnation of mass killing? You should not only be praising the former actions of atheists, making them your heroes, men like Hitler and Stalin, you should praise anyone, believer or non-believer alike, who causes huge leaps of progress in the natural selection process. Why would you want those weaklings that they killed to dirty the waters of the gene pool anyway? Why is it wrong to wipe out the weak and leave behind the strong since that is a core principle of evolution anyway? And if you do think that man should be morally accountable, why, since there is no higher authority than man according to you? And if you say that man is morally wrong due to the dictates of the majority in society, what then is your view of Nazi Germany? Their governing society decided that they were justified in killing millions. For consistencies sake, do you agree? Do you say that it was not the majority who favored this but a smaller controlling group? If that is a given, what if the smaller controlling group had convinced the masses of the justification of their cause? Would it then be right to kill millions? Do you say that the world would still be against it? What if the Nazi’s had won the war and conquered the world, and then converted the majority to their cause? If there is no higher authority than man and the majority of men want to kill Jews, is it then morally right? If you answer yes, congratulations on being intellectually honest amidst your monstrous evil. If you answer that it is not morally right no matter the number of believers who advocate this horrible practice, then congratulations, you have discovered a higher intelligence, His name is God. It means that if all men agree that the wrong things are right, they will still be guilty because morality comes from a person other than men. In a world without God, lies, murder, pedophilia, rape and theft could some day become virtuous if the majority wills it. In a world with God, these things will always be the monstrous evils they are.
“The atheist believes in nothing more supreme than men.”
Utter nonsense. Do you just make this stuff up? What do you even mean by ‘supreme’?
“In a world without God, lies, murder, pedophilia, rape and theft could some day become virtuous if the majority wills it”
Newsflash for you, if we based our society on ‘biblical morality’ then we’d have public stoning of children. Look on the other active thread here and you’ll see Christians actively supporting the idea of stoning children.
“[Nazis] governing society decided that they were justified in killing millions”.
Right, and they used religious writing to justify it. Not a good example to support your point.
“You should not only be praising the former actions of atheists, making them your heroes, men like Hitler ”
Absolutely EPIC fail John – Hitler was not an atheist. Given that your post is completely built on falsehoods, forgive me for not going through the rest of it line by line.
But Ryan, if I may,
despite the fact that Hitler may or may not have been an atheist (thought it turns out he was a believer in Nietzsche’s philosophies, and every member of the Luftwaffe was required to carry a copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra),..even if he wasn’t such you can’t just relegate the rest of John Fields argument as invalid. If he made 10 points, you have to refute every one of the 10 points. Refuting one is a fallacy on it’s own. It’s ONLY if all 10 points stand on that point that you refuted. A brief review of his points show that this was not a central basis of his argument. And Stalin was indeed an atheist.
Using your mode of argument we could just as easily say: Well Piltdown was a complete hoax so all evolution is a hoax.
But I notice that you still have not answered the primary question. Why was Hitler wrong? Why are Christians who killed in the name of God wrong? Because they are hypocrites? But why is hypocrisy wrong? If no one ever found out you were a hypocrite would it be wrong to be one?
What is the basis for this morality that you are imposing on others. That’s the question here. Tell me why the Nazi’s were wrong? What if they’d won the war and “purified” the human race by killing all the “weak”? You don’t complain when a lion does that?
Now don’t argue about who is weak or not, afterall the lions don’t argue about whether the losing lion was really not weak and just had bad PR or a bad day.
So what DOES the Atheist believe is more supreme than men? And why?
Are you borrowing Christian capital here? it seems like you are. But I could be wrong.
Neil, please call me Andrew. Call me Mr Ryan if you must, but not Ryan.
I don’t have the time to go through every one of John’s points. Suffice it to say that I pointed out several strawmen and untruths straight off the bat. If you want me to address others I could go into his misunderstanding of the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’, and his assertion that to accept that evolution happens is to say that it SHOULD happen.
“So what DOES the Atheist believe is more supreme than men? ”
Please defined ‘supreme’. Whales are bigger that us. Cheetahs are faster. Dogs can smell better etc. What exactly do you mean?
“Why was Hitler wrong?”
You just shove the question back one: why is Satan wrong? Why is it wrong to disobey God? Because he’s more powerful than you? Well Hitler was more powerful than lots of people, right?
Since we’re talking about intellect here (morality IS a matter of the intellect) name one creature on earth that has a greater more superior intellect than man? Come on, your lobbing softballs. If you don’t believe that man’s intellect is supreme, name for me the creature whose intellect surpasses men. Wait a minute, I forgot about your cousins the apes.
Was Hitler an atheist?
Not a public one. That said, Nietzsche and Machiavelli were both favorite authors of Hitlers. Nietzsche, who was an EXTREME influence in Hitler’s life was definitely an atheist. As to Hitler’s occasional mentions of God, Machiavelli wrote that, most of all, a successful leader must “appear” religious. Hitler could easily have been following what he’d learned to deceive the masses.
He walked, talked, and murdered like MANY other atheists of similar ilk. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc. Hitler was definitely not a Christian.
Hitler’s Secret Conversations 1941-1944 published by Farrar, Straus and Young, Inc.first edition, 1953
National Socialism and religion cannot exist together…. The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity…. Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things. (p 6 & 7)
Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure. (p 43)
When understanding of the universe has become widespread… Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity…. Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity…. And that’s why someday its structure will collapse…. …the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little…. Christianity the liar…. We’ll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. (p 49-52)
Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer…. The decisive falsification of Jesus’ doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work… for the purposes of personal exploitation…. Didn’t the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. Today, it’s in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday the instigator was Saul: the instigator today, Mardochai. Saul was changed into St.Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea. (p 63-65)
Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery…. …. When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let’s be the only people who are immunised against the disease. (p 118 & 119)
Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don’t believe the thing’s possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself…. Pure Christianity– the Christianity of the catacombs– is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics. (p 119 & 120)
There is something very unhealthy about Christianity (p 339)
It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors– but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch in the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity…. My regret will have been that I couldn’t… behold .” (p 278)
The fact that irreligious men use religious writing as a smokescreen for their actions does not make those writings the cause of their evil.
I think it is interesting that you condemn religion as evil when you don’t believe in a fixed rigid standard that does not change along with the whims of men. If God wanted certain things to be done based upon His prerogative as creator in attempting to ultimately protect His creation from the effects of evil, why was He wrong? Because of MAN’S standard? If might makes right you should not be making the argument about stoning children. If there is a God and He instructed that this be done, who are you to say He was wrong? And if you say that the almighty being is wrong, since morality is supposedly a matter of intellect and might, how do you condemn him without doing so by a set standard. It seems to me you and yours are in a quandary.
“morality IS a matter of the intellect”
So smarter equals more moral, does it? Interesting.
“Was Hitler an atheist? Not a public one.”
Oh, right – heresay then. Why don’t I just claim that Stalin was secretly a Christian.
“If might makes right you should not be making the argument about stoning children. If there is a God and He instructed that this be done, who are you to say He was wrong? ”
So you’re saying that given those circumstances, you ALSO support stoning of childrend. Interesting again!
Also, ‘might is right’ seems to be YOUR philosophy, not mine. God is right because he’s mightiest or smartest. Darwinism certainly is NOT about ‘might is right’. The fittest in an environment may easily be the weakest or smallest. At any rate, evolution is no more a philosophy than is gravity or soil erosion.
Again, epic fail John.
“That said, Nietzsche and Machiavelli were both favorite authors of Hitlers”
You forgot Martin Luther.
A man who believes himself above others
Assuming it’s true in the first place that atheists believe there is nothing “more supreme” than mankind (I say that I don’t follow that particular ideology, but I don’t doubt there are some that do)….there is a vast difference (that I’m surprised you can’t see) between believing that man is “most supreme,” and believing that oneself is “more supreme” than other men/women. “Man” is a collective statement referring to all men and women, not just to the person saying it.
and who sees no standards of morality may kill at will since he is already self-justified.
I don’t see how those two come into contact, really; how does believing in your own supreme moral authority (again, assuming a hypothetical) lead to believing that there are no standards?
In any case, it’s not that atheists “see no standard of morality;” they do, they just believe it comes from within, not from God. HUGE difference.
It is precisely because he does not believe himself morally bound by a higher power or fear the moral consequences of going against that moral law that he feels no compulsion against killing to further his agenda.
Is fear of consequence the only reason you don’t kill people? If so, I don’t like you very much >:(
So it is a fact that atheism promotes a lack of moral accountability which leads to the very kind of killing that atheists condemn others for.
So you observe that there is no real moral accountability in an objective sense, and on that I agree. However, telling ourselves that Big Sky Daddy is watching doesn’t force an objective moral standard into being; it just causes people to believe that there is a standard.
Basically, if there is such a standard, then atheists should be bound by it anyway, should they not? So how can they act as if they are not when they are?
Case in point; no absolute moral standard exists.
Why condemn others anyway since each man is basically a law unto himself?
P.S. Atheists don’t think they’re supreme authors of justice and law.
Why accuse others of evil when they are really helping the survival of the fittest?
What is with this Darwin Cult methodology? Why do you think that evolution has anything whatsoever to do with morality? What do you think secularists believed in before Charles Darwin came along? Evolution is a widely-accepted scientific theory, not some kind of lawbook. That’s all. What you say here would be akin to me saying, “So you think the universe was created in a puff of magic smoke, eh? How do you get your morality from that?!” It’s fallacious.
f one of the core components of the theory of evolution is true, that being that natural selection weeds out the weak and leaves the fittest of the species and individuals within the species to dominate the earth, the atheist should not be seeking to run a way from the mass killings done by other atheists, they should be embracing them as heroes of evolution.
Not at all. Do you understand that the theory claims we cannot “outwit” or “control” natural selection? The idea is that nature is “above” us all in a sense, and that through our own methods — be they murderous or kind — we “thin our ranks” naturally such that the most fit survive; and “fit” doesn’t mean “able to kill most people.” Fit means “whatever is most ideal in that society, at that given time.” Survival of the fittest is not some moral code we’re all bound to follow; it’s simply a template for how species transfer their “fitness” down the gene pool to the next generation.
Survival of the fittest is what they stand for.
“Stand for?” What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t “stand for” natural selection, but I do think it’s a good theory. Although it’s more of a metaphor.
So why the hypocritical condemnation of mass killing?
As they say on my other favorite forum, “Straw Man, LOL.”
You should not only be praising the former actions of atheists, making them your heroes, men like Hitler and Stalin, you should praise anyone, believer or non-believer alike, who causes huge leaps of progress in the natural selection process.
And what do you think defines the process of “natural selection,” exactly? Again, you’re looking at this with a very power-centric view. Could it be that perhaps you are the one who should worship Hitler and Stalin? After all, they were both powerful; isn’t that the reason you worship God? Because He is powerful?
Why would you want those weaklings that they killed to dirty the waters of the gene pool anyway?
Who are you talking about? I can’t imagine anyone whom I could call “dirty weaklings.” That sounds so….Old-Testament Christian….
Why is it wrong to wipe out the weak and leave behind the strong since that is a core principle of evolution anyway?
“Core Principle of Evolution?”
Okay, before I go on, you’re gonna have to tell me where you keep getting this stuff. I’ve never read anything like that in The Origin of Species. Did Darwin write some secret Nazi Bible that I’m unaware of? Seriously, what are you talking about?
And if you do think that man should be morally accountable, why, since there is no higher authority than man according to you?
Moral authority is a man-made concept, yes. And that word “should” is very misleading; the way you use it, it assumes that I believe someone else should be objectively “bound” by a subjective judgment or concept. But the way I use the word “should,” it implies subjectivity; when I say, “You should do that,” it basically means, “[I think] you should do that.” It’s implied by the fact that I said it, and so the phrase “I think” is not necessary. Does that make sense?
So ultimately, even if we believe in God, we can only comment our thoughts on morality, not decide it. We can say, “[I think] you should do that because it glorifies God.” Does it glorify God? Maybe, maybe not. You and I don’t get to decide that. But we can say what we think.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to check and see if what you or I think is “right.” Even the instruction manual for the cul–I mean, religion of Christianity, you know, the Bible? We can only read that and comment on it. “[I think] that when God says X, he means [this].” Does God mean that? Nobody knows. We can only speculate and comment~
If there is no higher authority than man and the majority of men want to kill Jews, is it then morally right?
No, because there’s no such thing as “Absolutely Morally Right.” If someone believes something is right, he/she has to assert that belief in his/her lifestyle and activism. That’s it. That’s the end of the line.
But Ryan, if I may,
BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT
(thought it turns out he was a believer in Nietzsche’s philosophies, and every member of the Luftwaffe was required to carry a copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra)
You’re terrible at mischaracterization, JSYK.
Second; even if that was true, it’s also possible to base a tyrannical government on the OT laws. Does that make the OT laws inherently “Bad?” I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think the OT laws are quite terrible, but not because somebody I see as “bad” used them to justify a “bad” position. That’s a terrible argument and it only shows your desperation; should I not read certain books and provoke thoughts about them just because Hitler also read those books? I also hear Hitler was a vegetarian, and that he loved children. Should I eat lots of meat to spite Hitler?
Absolutely EPIC fail John
Hah! That’s so cool, Andrew said “EPIC Fail~”
Not bashing or anything, just thought it was amusing
Using your mode of argument we could just as easily say: Well Piltdown was a complete hoax so all evolution is a hoax.
Maybe you should try to slow down and take this one point at a time yourself; every time one question is answered, you spend so much time drawing conclusions and putting words in people’s mouths before they even answer you that I don’t even grasp why you want to have this conversation in the first place. You clearly think you understand the opposing position 100%. So what’s the point?
Why was Hitler wrong? Why are Christians who killed in the name of God wrong? Because they are hypocrites? But why is hypocrisy wrong? If no one ever found out you were a hypocrite would it be wrong to be one?
Nothing’s “wrong,” and nothing’s “right.” Whatever reason you have to say one or the other, it can never be verified. The only thing you can say is “I think that is wrong.” But what does it matter? “God thinks that’s wrong, too.” Maybe so, but we can never ascertain that; we can only say, “I think that God thinks that’s wrong.” We can read the Bible and interpret what it says, and say what we think based on our interpretation….but it’s still our interpretation. It may or may not be how God would interpret the same situation, assuming He was real.
What is the basis for this morality that you are imposing on others.
I’m not imposing morality on anyone; that’s impossible. I can only believe what I believe and assert that belief through my way of living, same as you.
You don’t complain when a lion does that?
I also don’t hold a ceremony and complain when a lion dies. Come to think of it, I don’t do that when most people die, because I don’t know most people, and so it would be awkward to be present at their funeral….in any case, I don’t see what this comment was supposed to imply, what with lions….
So what DOES the Atheist believe is more supreme than men? And why?
Existence. What is here, is here, and what is not, is not. There’s nothing we can do about it, and there very likely never will be, barring some absolutely monumental meta-scientific breakthrough in the coming generations….
Are you borrowing Christian capital here? it seems like you are. But I could be wrong.
Eh? Christian money?
You just shove the question back one: why is Satan wrong? Why is it wrong to disobey God? Because he’s more powerful than you? Well Hitler was more powerful than lots of people, right?
I finally understand this position, and I’ve titled it, “Evangelical Argumentative Tactic #17: Redefinition.” When we re-define Good to mean Godly, that removes the self-evident nature of the word “Good” such that it no longer describes “that which is desirable,” but simply “That which is Godly.” One is then burdened with explaining why “Godliness” is “Good,” but without using the word “Good” because that defers back to “Godliness.”
Wait a minute, I forgot about your cousins the apes.
Serious question: Are you one of those joke Creationists from Family Guy that somehow came to life and started saying really off-the-wall things?
Not a public one.
So you say that Hitler was a “Secret Atheist?” On what grounds?
That said, Nietzsche and Machiavelli were both favorite authors of Hitlers.
So if Hitler reads Nietzche, that makes Nietzche bad? What about the kids and the vegetables…?
As to Hitler’s occasional mentions of God, Machiavelli wrote that, most of all, a successful leader must “appear” religious. Hitler could easily have been following what he’d learned to deceive the masses.
Ah, the “No True Christian” argument. Fallacious and easy to refute. Watch: Hitler wasn’t a “real” atheist, either, because a real atheist wouldn’t have committed genocide.
Tautology FTW!
He walked, talked, and murdered like MANY other atheists of similar ilk. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc. Hitler was definitely not a Christian.
By your logic, then, we can also deduce that he wasn’t an atheist, either. Not that it matters, even if he was; atheism is not a complete worldview in itself. It simply describes one aspect of a worldview, which is a lack of belief in a god.
Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure.
I very much want to read this book now~ What did you say it was called? “Hitler’s Secret Conversations?”
The fact that irreligious men use religious writing as a smokescreen for their actions does not make those writings the cause of their evil.
….aaand we’re back to “No True Christian.”
You have run one giant circle, my friend
I think it is interesting that you condemn religion as evil when you don’t believe in a fixed rigid standard that does not change along with the whims of men
It’s either the will of mankind, or the “whim” of God. You trust in Big Sky Daddy; I don’t think He exists. I call that a fair deal; you live your way, I’ll live mine, and where they collide, we’ll have conflict. It’s how society works; there’s nothing wrong with that.
If God wanted certain things to be done based upon His prerogative as creator in attempting to ultimately protect His creation from the effects of evil, why was He wrong? Because of MAN’S standard?
Better question: Why was He right?
If there is a God and He instructed that this be done, who are you to say He was wrong?
Who is to say that He is “right?” Himself? Okay, so you’ve redefined “good” once again to mean “godly.” How would you describe God’s “godliness?” What about it should make me care one way or the other what God thinks about anything? Because He’s powerful? You know, Hitler was pretty powerful, too. Should we all obey him, according to your argument?
The fittest in an environment may easily be the weakest or smallest. At any rate, evolution is no more a philosophy than is gravity or soil erosion.
I would also argue that there exists no such standard as “objectively fit.” That position would seem to completely run counter to the idea that there is no “objective morality;” like moral decisions, fitness in the sense of natural selection is also quite subjective, also depending on the scope one chooses to take into account.
“That said, Nietzsche and Machiavelli were both favorite authors of Hitlers”
You forgot Martin Luther.
And Jesus.
Andrew, sorry about calling you Ryan, I’d misread your name.
When we talk about “Supreme” we should be careful not to equivocate. I believe that John’s statement related directly to moral obligation, not size or intelligence. So perhaps you could respond to that.
On your other comments re.Hitler and power and morality.
Surely we can agree that there is a difference between “power” and “creator”. In otherwords, if God exists and is the creator of you and me, surely he has the “authority” to command us to obey his laws. In otherwords, Hitler may have had the power but he didn’t have the inherent intrinsic authority. As we always say: While it may be useful in the regulation of morality, power is not as relevant in the justification of morality. Morality must be based on something intrinsic and must be “owed” to someone (you can’t owe morality to a code or an inanimate object or non personal being). You can owe it to a society…but then we come back to many of the issues I discussed in this blog oh so many months ago.
Secondly we could delve into Eutyphro’s dilemma and I will publish a blog on that shortly, but God is not capricious, that which he commands is commanded because it is both intrinsically good and intrinsically necessary and intrinsically part of his nature. Now this does not mean that you will agree or know his long term plans. But that is not required logically. I.e. you don’t need to understand ALL the reasons for a law to accept it.
Let us deal with the stoning of children. At the worst you can say is that I am being hypocritical to my own principles. But I am not being hypocritical to your principles. You can say: well Neil your world view is faulty, but you cannot argue that it is “wrong” to stone children who are bad. On what basis is it bad? If there is no God then stoning a bad child who would pass on his bad genes to other kids may arguably be good for society in the long run. Lion pride leaders sometime kill young male lions if they disrupt the pack and jostle the leader for power. Do you call that evil?
You can’t call anything evil unless you have a standard. But rather than admitting that you are trying to argue that my standard is unacceptable. OK maybe it is, but for the sake of argument, let’s say that God is a very mean and cranky God and he enjoys torturing atheists for fun. But all that means is that he doesn’t like you. It may not mean he doesn’t exist (actually it does…but I’ll deal with that in my blog – unless you can figure it out here). Now I’m not saying that God doesn’t like you, I think he does – I think he very much loves you, but bear with me for the argument.
So if I grant you that God has determined that it is good for atheists to suffer and kids to be stoned, what have you achieved? that you hate the God that you don’t believe exists?
How does that justify that rape is objectively bad? As long as you claim that there are objective moral values you are stuck. Note we don’t need more than one of them and we can freely disagree on all the rest. But as long as we have ontologically arrived at a single one then we have a problem.
So to summarize a long winded point: We have two issues here:
1. How do you justify your compulsion that Rape is evil, or Hitler was bad, or torturing babies for fun is wrong, or being a hypocrite if no one finds out is bad or stealing if no one ever finds out. Or killing a homeless mentally ill person for the fun of it and no one ever finds out. Is that compulsion in your DNA? And if it is, who’s to say that that is an objective value.
2. How do I justify my world view with a God who condones the stoning of wicked children.
But this Blog was NOT about 2, it was about 1. And I would say that the burden of proof is upon you for 1 and that burden of proof it seems to me exists even if I cannot justify 2 to your satisfaction.
At the worst you are avoiding the question, at the best you are asking a deep question that you crave an answer to. I think I do have an answer for 2 but I’d rather start a new thread for that answer if possible.
In otherwords, if God exists and is the creator of you and me, surely he has the “authority” to command us to obey his laws.
That right there; I have no idea why you deduce this. Why does creation, in your mind, automatically entail some kind of objective moral authority? It does imply the authority to take back — i.e. you made it, so the capability exists for you to destroy it or “un-make” it — but I don’t see how that corellates with some kind of “binding respect.”
When I compare this relationship between man and God to that of a father and son (or mother and daughter), the response tends to be, “Well, humans don’t create, they procreate.” But I think that begs the question somewhat….so assume that God literally “created” all human life from scratch. He has the power to do so, so naturally he has the power to un-do it. That’s not deniable. The question is, how does the power imply the right, especially in an objective sense? That is what I do not understand.
By this logic, any time a human has the power to do something, he or she should. And yet, you say this:
Hitler may have had the power but he didn’t have the inherent intrinsic authority.
So how do you differentiate between God’s “power” and His “authority?” You can’t justify authority with power. So how do you justify it?
God is not capricious, that which he commands is commanded because it is both intrinsically good and intrinsically necessary and intrinsically part of his nature.
This is just another incarnation of the Giant Circle Of Evangelical Argument #17. If you can explain the “goodness” of God without deferring to this circle of faux-definitions, that would be absolutely wonderful~
. But that is not required logically. I.e. you don’t need to understand ALL the reasons for a law to accept it.
Maybe not, but I still need a reason to think it “deserves” to be accepted in an objective sense.
You can say: well Neil your world view is faulty, but you cannot argue that it is “wrong” to stone children who are bad.
Nor would I try. Such an argument would be meaningless. So you “shouldn’t,” because it’s “wrong.” What does that mean? Although I would try to stop you from stoning a child if at all possible.
On what basis is it bad?
The non-theist variant of “wrong” and “right” is the complete opposite of the Christian variant in this sense; hear me out. The Christian says, “This is objectively right, beyond all of us, and so I have the objective right to denounce you in this way!” The atheist says, given the same situation and speaking to the same person or group that the Christian was speaking to, “You don’t have an objective right to say or do that, and neither do I. So as there is nothing stopping you from behaving that way, there is nothing stopping me from acting to stop you in response.”
They’re basically the same result; we both believe in things, and we both act on those beliefs, at times quite harshly. The only difference is the justification, and you simply can’t hold up a case that an atheist “has no justification.” It’s just a different kind than the one under which you operate.
If there is no God then stoning a bad child who would pass on his bad genes to other kids may arguably be good for society in the long run.
Ghaaa…..again with the evolution/survival of the fittest nonsense. In what way do you automatically connect a lack of belief in God with some kind of cult-like worship of SotF as some Godlike entity?
Lion pride leaders sometime kill young male lions if they disrupt the pack and jostle the leader for power. Do you call that evil?
No. But you seem to think it’s “evil” for a child to disrupt the pack and jostle the leader for power, and so you kill them by stoning. Or was that just a hypothetical position you took?
You can’t call anything evil unless you have a standard.
Exactly; as I’ve said (many, many, *many* times), I do not accept the idea that there is such a thing as “objective evil.”
But rather than admitting that you are trying to argue that my standard is unacceptable.
I’ve already admitted that, and that’s why I say your standard is unacceptable: Because you claim it is objective, when it cannot be.
OK maybe it is, but for the sake of argument, let’s say that God is a very mean and cranky God and he enjoys torturing atheists for fun. But all that means is that he doesn’t like you.
Exactly! There’s nothing objectively “right” about that; it just means that a really powerful person, for whom there is no higher authority (sort of like the hypothetical atheists that were mentioned earlier, who think there is no “supreme authority”), doesn’t like me. That doesn’t mean it’s objectively so that atheists are bad, just because God hates us.
It may not mean he doesn’t exist (actually it does…but I’ll deal with that in my blog – unless you can figure it out here).
Of course it means He exists; He has to exist to hate us, doesn’t He?
(Hypothetically, of course~)
So if I grant you that God has determined that it is good for atheists to suffer and kids to be stoned, what have you achieved? that you hate the God that you don’t believe exists?
Not at all; it means that I oppose the standard that you have set in believing that. In believing that, you agree that those things are “right,” objectively so, and you hold that standard to others. My standard says, you have no right to enact such a standard upon me, and so I ‘defend myself,’ ideologically speaking.
How does that justify that rape is objectively bad?
See last 14+ comments.
As long as you claim that there are objective moral values you are stuck.
A claim I have LONG opposed on this very blog, in this topic and others; read some of my other comments from earlier topics, if you must. I’ve already argued this point too many times….and so in any case, I’m not “stuck,” as you say.
1. How do you justify your compulsion that Rape is evil, or Hitler was bad, or torturing babies for fun is wrong, or being a hypocrite if no one finds out is bad or stealing if no one ever finds out. Or killing a homeless mentally ill person for the fun of it and no one ever finds out. Is that compulsion in your DNA? And if it is, who’s to say that that is an objective value.
So you mean that you only think these things are wrong because of some law you believe you’re supposed to follow? Is that what I’m supposed to gather about your view from this?
In any case….to use the stealing-when-nobody-will-find-out example, I don’t steal because it would make me feel bad if my stealing caused someone else trouble. And I don’t steal even when there doesn’t seem to be an immediate consequence because I don’t know if it will affect someone (even if it seems like it won’t, there might still be someone somewhere down the line who is faulted for not watching the stolen item closely enough, or whatever), and having been in that person’s shoes before, I understand that it’s not a pleasant (or often fair) way for things to work out. To me, those kinds of things are important. Do you understand at least that much?
But this Blog was NOT about 2, it was about 1. And I would say that the burden of proof is upon you for 1 and that burden of proof it seems to me exists even if I cannot justify 2 to your satisfaction.
When I say you haven’t “justified” it, I don’t mean objectively so, as (I’ve said many times) I don’t believe that’s possible. In the basic sense that you are free to choose which values to respect and act upon, there is no problem whatsoever with you feeling that it’s okay to murder children. However, I cannot allow that sort of “morality” to be carried out in my presence. Let it be known that if you and I ever meet under conditions which have lead you to attempt to stone a child to death, I will fight you in the interest of that child’s life. Simple as that. You live your way, I live mine, and where they meet, we will collide~
(We both know that will never happen….but it’s a hypothetical that makes my point.)
So you think there is no objective evil, there only your preference for one thing or another? I.e. you don’t prefer that a child be stoned (it both senses of the word hopefully) or a wpman be raped or someone steal.
Am I stating this correctly?
BTW as I said, I will address the seemingly circular argument of the Euthypro’s dilemma in a separate blog.
So you think there is no objective evil, there only your preference for one thing or another? I.e. you don’t prefer that a child be stoned (it both senses of the word hopefully) or a woman be raped or someone steal.
Am I stating this correctly?
That is the extent of my ability, yes. I do not condone those activities. And wherever my vote matters, it will go to that end.
P.S.
You are way behind the class on this particular argument….I have a feeling I know exactly what you’re going to say next, unfortunately; the entire circle you plan to run in response to this….and so I wait.
Tim, I’d be interested to see if you’d pre-guessed what I’d be saying. Naturally your feedback will be very valuable so I hope you’ll monitor the new blogs so you catch it when it comes out.
Tim based on your response, can I say then that your stance is that there is nothing actually or objectively then wrong in your mind with rape, it’s just a preference of yours not to rape others or have them be raped.
Neil, Tim and I both oppose stoning children, we would both try to stop someone stoning a child if we saw it happening. None of the Christians posting on these threads seem to be able to say the same thing. Matt, Andrea and others all say that stoning kids was OK, at SOME points in history, even if it isn’t now. So you need to ask your fellow Christians about moral relativism, not the atheists.
“So if I grant you that God has determined that it is good for atheists to suffer and kids to be stoned, what have you achieved?”
You’ve shown that God’s morality differs from mine, and that I can’t follow his moral example. What would it mean for YOU? Let’s add in that he also likes to torture left-handed Christians – he just figures that they’re going against the natural way of things. Do you still maintain that he’s the moral arbiter? What does the word morality even MEAN in these circumstances?
“I will address the seemingly circular argument of the Euthypro’s dilemma in a separate blog”
The reason we second guess you is that we’ve read a dozen of these blogs already from you, Frank and others. And all it comes down to is an assertion that ‘Goodness is the nature of God’. Which is meaningless. What if someone else asserts that ‘Evil is the nature of God’? How do you argue against that?
“In otherwords, if God exists and is the creator of you and me, surely he has the “authority” to command us to obey his laws.”
So if you discovered you were created by Satan, you would feel compelled to go round slaughtering everyone? Really Neil?
“God is not capricious, that which he commands is commanded because it is both intrinsically good and intrinsically necessary and intrinsically part of his nature”
Is this an assertion, a guess, a hope?
“But all that means is that he doesn’t like you. It may not mean he doesn’t exist ”
Right Neil. Except I never for one second made the argument that it DID mean that.
By the way, it’s not necessary to resolve an argument about whether stoning children is evil in order to want to stop it happening. I would attempt to stop children dying of small pox regardless of whether or not I believed the virus to be actually ‘evil’. All that is necessary is that I don’t want children to suffer. Feel free to make an argument that children SHOULD suffer to persuade me otherwise, in the meantime I’ll stick with the idea that they should not.
So in short, you still haven’t answered the Hitler question. And on that subject. It is John and the other Christians here saying that children who ‘turn against God’ in some circumstances deserve to be stoned. It’s certainly a much smaller jump from that belief to ‘Non-Christians and gays should be gassed’, that it is from MY beliefs.
So if John says that Hitler is ‘quacking like a duck’, I have to say that it’s a Christian duck I hear, not an atheist one.
Tim, I’d be interested to see if you’d pre-guessed what I’d be saying.
Well, the first response is usually as follows, where you attempt to imply (without saying, at least at first) that there is something wrong with the fact that, although I oppose atrocious behavior, I don’t believe that God thinks it’s wrong, or that my feelings on the subject “objectively exist” somewhere:
Tim based on your response, can I say then that your stance is that there is nothing actually or objectively then wrong in your mind with rape, it’s just a preference of yours not to rape others or have them be raped.
At which point I will say, “Yes, that’s about all any of us can do.” And I will point out that, even as a Christian, all you can do is say that it’s objectively wrong, and say that God’s law says it’s wrong. That doesn’t change (or demonstrate) whether or not it is actually so; not saying that it’s not so just because of that….I’m just saying that asserting it in either direction does not make it so. i.e. my saying “There is no objective morality” in itself doesn’t “prove” that OM doesn’t exist anymore than you saying “God says so” “proves” that it does.
And then you might respond with an emotional appeal, repeating the earlier question: “So you really don’t think there’s anything ‘wrong’ with raping and murdering?’
To which I will most likely attempt once more to clarify: Yes, I see something wrong with it, hence my position. That doesn’t necessarily mean that there is something “objectively wrong” with it; I perceive this feature because of my worldview. There is nothing to show that it is “actually there,” that there is some kind of “absolute wrongness” present in the act; the fact that I feel such a thing does not force it into reality.
And I will add post-script that I feel that many times, people confuse their own personal desires for reality and society with what is actually there — sure, I would like to have a world where people didn’t kill each other (where they didn’t have to, not even in self-defense), and I spend my life working towards goals like that. But that doesn’t mean that there’s some being out there supporting my every move, whose actions my emotions are merely “gauging” and interpreting. Could it be so? I suppose. But other than the fact that a lot of people say so, I see no reason to believe it is so.
What does the word morality even MEAN in these circumstances?
In this case it literally means, “the word of God.” Like “goodness,” the definition has been changed such that it is no longer self-evident.
When I use the term “morality,” I am referring to self-discipline based on ideological principles. When the apologist refers to morality, it seems more often than not that he/she is referring to an external law laid down by God, not internal moral principles. I think that was the biggest source of confusion here for a very long time (at least it was for me).
The reason we second guess you is that we’ve read a dozen of these blogs already from you, Frank and others. And all it comes down to is an assertion that ‘Goodness is the nature of God’. Which is meaningless. What if someone else asserts that ‘Evil is the nature of God’? How do you argue against that?
I don’t see a problem with anyone putting that idea out there, as far as giving other Christians reasons to believe whatever they want to believe; I don’t really consider that my business. My problem with the way these ideas are presented is that the authors of these blogs try so often to make these things seem “self-evident,” or “obvious,” in such a way that non-believers should be compelled to believe them for basically no reason, other than, “It just is.” If believers want to discuss amongst themselves the finer points of their beliefs, given that they already follow the basic religious tenets, then these kinds of claims make more sense. But given that the articles are usually less about inter-Christian dialogue and more about smacking atheists or other religions down because of some perceived “obviousness” or “self-evidence,” it seems odd that the authors would so often rely on such principles. I mean, they’ve made it clear to me that they know what kinds of evidence I will not accept; so why the miscommunication?
What is boils down to is, oftentimes fundamentalists get angry when you don’t submit to the first wave of their argumentative tactics, and claim that you are “in denial” or something. Does it never really occur to them that the reason I’m still a “heretic” is because I’ve already heard those arguments from others, and found them lacking? Perhaps we could explore that some, instead of re-treading familiar ground for the 110th time….
Is this an assertion, a guess, a hope?
It’s more of a guess, I would say; I hang out on a video game forum as well as this one, and on that forum we’re constantly trying to explain the discrepancies in storytelling that occur in certain games/books/movies. Oftentimes, people get carried away and start trying to explain things that are obviously a factor of the gameplay (i.e. “save points” are programmed in to keep you from having to play a game for 6-7 hours at a time, so you can break it up into manageable segments), and are basically impossible even by the rules of the game world.
Like that, there are a lot of things said in the Bible about the existence of God that essentially contradict. Maybe not directly, but there is an implicit contradiction. And so, to avoid that, a lot of Christians try to argue possible ways that God could get around that contradiction, if He wanted to. Of course, the problem is that these arguments can only show how God could exists, not that He does. In fact, whether or not we accept these arguments at face-value can, at times, determine whether or not we believe in God at all; to some, the fact that the discrepancies exist in the first place is reason to suspect them. To others, God exists no matter what, and so there *must* be an explanation for the discrepancies, and therefore anything they can come up with must be true. Hence statements like “Goodness is in the nature of God.” Is it possible? I’m sure it is. But do we know that it’s so? Not at all; there is simply no way we could know such a thing. The means to acquire that knowledge does not exist.
P.S.
The word for that last part is “Fanon.” From TVtropes.org:
Fanon is the set of assumptions based on that material which, while they generally seem to be the “obvious” or “only” interpretation of canonical fact, are not actually part of the canon. Occasionally, the explanation seems good enough to just be “common sense.” The salient point to remember is that when someone shouts, “That episode was terrible because it violates canon!”, they are very often totally incorrect.
In this case, in deference to theories about the Biblical nature of God.
“Hence statements like “Goodness is in the nature of God.” Is it possible? I’m sure it is. ”
I’m not. I still maintain it’s a meaningless statement. If God is incapable of doing bad, then it’s meaningless to say he does good. There’s an implicit choice in the idea of doing good – it means you chose the ‘right’ path and spurned the ‘wrong’ one. If you have no choice over your path, then it can’t be said that you are choosing the right one.
If I define ‘a good movie’ as ‘any movie that Spielberg makes’, then the term ‘good movie’ loses any meaning. The best I can say is that Spielberg is an example of a great director, who generally makes the best choice for making a film.
It was more of an attempt to humor the question….if we assume a great number of things, and take a certain position (certainly not the one being reflected here), and we define “goodness” by a standard that exists independently of God, then it could be possible that that external nature is “encoded” into God’s being, in the way that maliciousness or maternal instinct can be encoded into a human’s DNA.
But no, for all intents and purposes, I do not believe that is the case.
if… we define “goodness” by a standard that exists independently of G-d
That would imply a standard which is in some sense above G-d, so that’s a non-starter.
Exactly. That assumption is the only way (that I’m aware of) that “goodness” can be ingrained into God’s nature, is that if the standard were “above Him” in that it existed apart from him. Whether or not that’s possible is a different story.
In order for it to be in His nature, it has to be defined separately. Otherwise, it’s like saying God is ingrained into Himself, which makes no sense. Hence the conundrum. God simply cannot be both “goodness” (self-evident desirability) and “God” (godliness) if the two are separate things.
It’s the Euthypro’s dilemma that Frank and Neil claim to have solved, but never to my satisfaction.
Tim from what I understand you don’t think rape or racism are objectively bad, it’s just not your personal preference. So you could never call a racist evil or bad or wrong, or tell an African American that racism is wrong for everyone including a racist, all you can say is that racism is just not your personal preference.
So Hitler was not really wrong, just wrong in your eyes. In Hitler’s eyes, killing Jews was OK. In his morality killing Jews was just fine, in yours it isn’t. Is this what you believe?
No of course you’ll say: Isn’t it obvious that Hitler thought that killing Jews was OK.
But the real issue here is that you cannot fault Hitler then. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with what Hitler did and there was nothing intrinsically wrong with racism. In fact if the world hadn’t figured out that racism was bad, then that would have been fine too according to your principles (because you would have also agreed with them). And if you had been brought up by racist people who taught you to hate colored people then that would just be fine. As long as no one thought that racism was bad (except for the minority who were discriminated) then it would never really have been bad. In fact using your logic even when the majority did realize that racism was bad, it still wasn’t really bad, it was just a preference of the majority.
So at the end of the day nothing is good, nothing is bad, it’s just that we have preferences of one thing or another. Hitler likes killing people Mother Teresa likes hugging them. What’s the difference except our personal preferences?
This seems to be the logical conclusions based on your statements.
Tim from what I understand you don’t think rape or racism are objectively bad, it’s just not your personal preference. So you could never call a racist evil or bad or wrong, or tell an African American that racism is wrong for everyone including a racist, all you can say is that racism is just not your personal preference.
Why does it matter what I “could” say? If we’re in a situation where someone is planning on killing or raping someone, and the reasons I have to offer aren’t stopping them, I think talking is about the last thing on my mind. I’m thinking action. Sometimes, values are simply irreconcilable; there needn’t be an “objective moral code” for this to happen.
And yet, no matter how many times I say this, someone continues to respond, “But how can you say that they are objectively wrong?” -_-
I mean, I could choose to believe in OM, then stand around talking about how “wrong” the other person is….or I could take action based on my beliefs.
In his morality killing Jews was just fine, in yours it isn’t. Is this what you believe?
In my “morality,” his “morality” is not acceptable. Simple as that. I’ve already explained this.
No of course you’ll say: Isn’t it obvious that Hitler thought that killing Jews was OK.
What? How do you reach that conclusion? Or are you putting words in my mouth again?
But the real issue here is that you cannot fault Hitler then.
Not objectively, no. Again, as I’ve explained, that is not necessary in order to oppose such a belief system.
Hitler likes killing people Mother Teresa likes hugging them. What’s the difference except our personal preferences?
Are you daft?
I’m starting to think that you’re simply going to keep repeating this, no matter what I say. If I’m wrong about that, please feel free to prove it so by acting like you actually hear and understand what I’m saying, instead of dipping back into Turek’s and Matt Garwood’s same old logical loop.
If what you say here is true — that my view in any way forces me to think like that — then you would also have to say the same of these things:
-) That there is an “objective time” that we observe by using a clock; that each hour, minute and second “objectively exist.” If they don’t, then what’s the point in having clocks at all? I mean, if they’re just agreed-upon symbols that help us communicate and work around each other’s schedules, then what’s the use, right? (as oxymoronic as that sentence is…)
-) That money is “objectively valuable;” that our dollars and cents represent an objective force that exists independently of money, that our money simply “measures.” I mean, if it’s just an agreed-upon symbol that works as a sort of “contract” between individuals, companies and governments to help us manage our labor debts, then what’s the use, right? (again, asking why it’s useful in the same sentence that we explain why it’s useful….)
-) That words “objectively mean” things; that each word, letter, phrase, sentence and paragraph “objectively exists” somewhere, independently of the ink and page that construct them, or the sounds that convey them. I mean, if they’re just a bunch of made-up symbols and sounds that we’ve agreed to use to communicate certain things that are not easy to convey in direct physical terms, and they’re not really there, then what’s the use, right?
In that same vein, let’s take a look at your claim again:
-) That morality is “objectively present;” that our personal moral decisions and values reflect some kind of ethereal “real” morality. I mean, if they’re just a bunch of values we’ve agreed upon to keep order by virtue of keeping us from killing each other (thus devaluing life and leading to chaos, as if life is not held to value then nothing else can be held to value, either, because life is the precedent of such things), or stealing our property (thus leading to devaluing of honest labor, which eliminates the desire to work, which leads to the crumbling of society because there is work that must be done to keep society in motion, that simply cannot be compensated for by stealing or abdicating), or other such atrocious behaviors, then what’s the use, right?
That’s about as simple as I know how to put it….if you still don’t understand, then I just don’t know what else to say. I may not have proven my case in your eyes by now, and that I might understand….but I simply don’t see how you can just not see how I have at the very least established a premise wherein my view is possible…. How much more simply can I put it? What still doesn’t make sense about this?
What? How do you reach that conclusion? Or are you putting words in my mouth again?
Wait, wait….I misread that. I thought you were saying, “It isn’t obvious, not isn’t it obvious. The lack of a question mark at the end of the sentence misled me.
“But the real issue here is that you cannot fault Hitler then.”
Hi Neil. I think you’re merging two different stances–moral relativism and moral nihilism. A moral relativist can claim that actions are wrong; the problem is in reconciling contradictory claims.
All of these questions turn on your definition of “moral,” and I don’t know what yours is.
Tim:
“Hitler likes killing people Mother Teresa likes hugging them. What’s the difference except our personal preferences?
Are you daft?”
No I am not daft, and may I ask us all to maintain a tone of respect and dignity at all times. It makes the conversations a lot more enjoyable for everyone if we speak with mutual respect at all times. Ad hominems or mean spirited comments are in poor taste. If someone does not understand your argument then either restate it or withdraw from the argument.
But since you said that I think this IS really the issue. I don’t know why this would be something to be daft about.
And it seems contradictory for you to think that I may be daft because I’m putting your very theory into practice. You just seem to not like the implications. What if in my morality that I’ve chosen for myself I’ve decided that Hitler was indeed better than Mother Teresa (who interestingly enough was a personal family friend of ours lest you think I’m dissing her). What if I were to say Mother Teresa didn’t let the weak die but instead propagated their genes in society and that was bad for society. Who are you to tell me I’m daft for believing that? It seems hypocritical.
Well you say, that’s OK, you simply don’t agree with me, but we then ask who died and made you the moral standard giver?
You don’t prefer Hitler’s actions. But it seems that you cannot say that Hitler’s actions and Mother Teresa’s actions differ on any standard, except for one that you have created for yourself. And if Hitler had won the war and taken over the world perhaps we would all be sitting here saying: Well what our great uniting leader Hitler did was very good for society to kill all those pesky sub-human Jews.
You keep trying to avoid this rational and logical conclusion. You see the objective moralist sees the laws like the laws of Physics. They are objectively there, not arrived at by consensus or fashion or subjectively. You on the other hand I think see moral laws as fashion, this year it’s cuffs, next year it’s pleats, last year it was flat fronts.
We see it as stable as physical laws. Whomever set the Universal physical laws also set the extraUniversal moral laws.
It is fashionable today to give human rights to everyone. If the world were taken over by a dictator/tyrant tomorrow who decided that all green eyed people are evil, that’s whats will be right tomorrow to the moral relativist.
In fact we’d say that most Moral laws are more permanent than even physical laws as they are transcendent like 1+1=2. They don’t need a universe to exist for them to be true and they will continue to be true after this universe has died a heat death and a new universe has been created.
You called me daft for coming to this conclusion, but despite all that why take my word why not take the word of atheists who claim to speak for you and claim to have arrived at their conclusions logically and rationallly:
Bertrand Russell, “Outside human desires there is no moral standard.”
What is the result of such thinking?
Well Jean-Paul Sartre, believed that there is no objective meaning to life. Therefore, according to Sartre, man must create his own values. Sartre protested against the Nuremberg trials of Nazi War Criminals. Sartre correctly realized that the Nazis were being judged by universal law (i.e. crimes against humanity). Whereas the trial assumed that such a law existed, Sartre believed it did not. The democracies had no right to judge the Nazis if all values were relative to different cultures or different individuals.
Tim on what basis would you persecute the Nazi’s if you were the lawyer at Nuremberg? That you didn’t like their morality? Again who made you King? They were just obeying orders. Why should they think there was a higher morality than the Hitler’s that they were responsible for?
“Quentin Smith claims that a serial killer’s murdering people is intrinsically good because it satisfies his desires. Now this good just happens to be overridden by the greater good of his victims’ getting to live and satisfy their desires. But, nevertheless, on his theory he says that a serial killer’s murdering people is intrinsically good.
Another example: Quentin says that love relationships are not intrinsically good. He says, “the primary reason love is good is that it satisfies our desires to love and be loved.” But again, such a self-centered justification is morally repugnant. He also denies that friendship, knowledge, health, and any other such thing is intrinsically good. (Smith, Ethical and Religious Thought as quoted by William Lane Craig)
Union College NY, Atheist Professor Taylor says:
The modern age, more or less repudiating the idea of a divine lawgiver, has nevertheless tried to retain the ideas of moral right and wrong, not noticing that in casting God aside, they have also abolished the conditions of meaningfulness for moral right and wrong as well…. Thus, even educated persons sometimes declare that such things as war…or the violation of human rights, are ‘morally wrong,’ and they imagine that they have said something true and significant.
Educated people do not need to be told, however, that questions such as these have never been answered outside of religion.
“Contemporary writers in ethics, who blithely discourse upon moral right and wrong and moral obligation without any reference to religion, are really just weaving intellectual webs from thin air; which amounts to saying that they discourse without meaning.”
(Richard Taylor, Ethics, Faith, and Reason (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1985))
Michael Ruse, professor of the philosophy of science,
The position of the modern evolutionist…is that humans have an awareness of morality…because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation, no less than are hands and feet and teeth…. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, [ethics] is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves…. Nevertheless…such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction and…any deeper meaning is illusory….
(Michael Ruse, “Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics,” in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 262, 26869.)
Now in fairness you may complain: But these Atheists do not speak for me. But I am not arguing that, I’m arguing that these atheists have logically and rationally arrived at the SAME conclusion that I have. They have invariably said, if there is no Objective/Absolute standard giver, no one and I mean no one can say that Mother Teresa is any different than Hitler.
Daft? Ask Russell and Sartre, Smith, Taylor and Ruse if they are daft too. They after all derived those conclusions long before I did.
“And if Hitler had won the war and taken over the world perhaps we would all be sitting here saying: Well what our great uniting leader Hitler did was very good for society to kill all those pesky sub-human Jews.”
I have no doubt that a great many Christians would be saying just that thing Neil. Like you, they would woship a God who fitted their own moral standards. You manage to worship one who condones slavery, stoning children and homophobia. I think that condemning Hitler is more of a problem for you than it is for me.
No I am not daft, and may I ask us all to maintain a tone of respect and dignity at all times. It makes the conversations a lot more enjoyable for everyone if we speak with mutual respect at all times.
You mean like the “respect” you show by constantly putting words in my mouth and misrepresenting my position?
And it seems contradictory for you to think that I may be daft because I’m putting your very theory into practice.
….and now you ignore every single part of my actual argument in favor of the one part of it you can find an issue with….
You just seem to not like the implications.
There are no such implications; you keep making this accusation, and I keep explaining why it’s simply incorrect, and instead of answering that justification, you just accuse me of “not liking the implications.” What is the problem, here? Are you ignoring me on purpose?
What if I were to say Mother Teresa didn’t let the weak die but instead propagated their genes in society and that was bad for society. Who are you to tell me I’m daft for believing that? It seems hypocritical.
I’m as free as can be to believe that you’re a daft individual, especially after this last round. I generally save that remark for certain people, though
In any case, my belief system does not obligate me, in any way, to respect and acknowledge the beliefs of others as ‘valid.’
I will not respond further in that direction until you acknowledge this, because anything you say that does not acknowledge this is simply ignoring my point.
Well you say, that’s OK, you simply don’t agree with me, but we then ask who died and made you the moral standard giver?
Nobody….did you not read my statement earlier? I said that so-called “moral relativism” does not mean that “whatever we think of becomes the moral law.” It simply means that there is no objective moral law, and so we’re forced to rely on our own standards to find right and wrong.
Here’s how this exchange between you and I keeps going:
ME: There is no objective moral law, so we have to use our own to decide on what is right or wrong so that we can operate socially.
YOU: But how do you know if it’s objectively right or wrong?
ME: You can’t, because there is no such thing as objectively right or wrong.
YOU: But how do you know if it’s objectively right or wrong?
ME: You don’t; you try to figure it out yourself and act accordingly, until something happens that forces you to reexamine your definition of “right” or “wrong.”
YOU: But how can you figure out if something is “objectively right and wrong?”
ME: You don’t need a definition of “objectively” right or wrong in order to have an understanding of “right and wrong,” because they can fully exist as subjective concepts.
YOU: But how can you know if something is “objectively right or wrong?”
I have given you at least three or four solid explanations for this, and you just keep stepping over them and asking the same question without even acknowledging them. Which leads me to assume that you are either daft or malicious.
But it seems that you cannot say that Hitler’s actions and Mother Teresa’s actions differ on any standard, except for one that you have created for yourself.
Yes! Exactly! That’s all anyone can do. Even the Christian position is based upon one’s own moral standard being used to accept that of the Bible, which is then retroactively applied to all things within one’s worldview.
nd if Hitler had won the war and taken over the world perhaps we would all be sitting here saying: Well what our great uniting leader Hitler did was very good for society to kill all those pesky sub-human Jews.
Again, I must ask that question….for a couple of reasons:
1) Even if Hitler had somehow taken over the entire world….are you seriously trying to tell me that you believe nobody would oppose him, even in the moral sense? That every single person in the world would just accept his rule as absolute and moral and right? Because that is unrealistic.
2) Once again, you have succeeded in misrepresenting my case; it’s not about agreeing on right and wrong “because it’s what everyone else does,” it’s about deciding what’s right and wrong on your own. Sure, sometimes we rely on others to help put our positions into perspective, but sometimes we have to be the ones to help others put their views into perspective, as well. You keep painting pictures of this nightmarish Hitlerian utopia wherein all people live by the exact same moral law and we all support Hitler, but look at the way things are today! You guys seem to think Obama is pretty far-out, but do you see the world bending to his will? There are still people who oppose him, even as moderate as he is (especially compared to someone like Hitler). What makes you think that a world of active, polarized extremism would change that?
You are ignoring every point that I make; I am confident of that by now. I find that I’ve begun to repeat myself, and as I do, I think, “Hey, he never answered that!”
You keep trying to avoid this rational and logical conclusion.
It’s neither rational nor logical. You are putting words in my mouth to reinforce your own stereotypes.
You see the objective moralist sees the laws like the laws of Physics….We see it as stable as physical laws. Whomever set the Universal physical laws also set the extraUniversal moral laws.
That is not “morality!” That’s a law. Morality is not law; morality is personal conduct and discipline. A law is just that — a law. This is by far the biggest flaw in the Christian moral argument, is that it tries to personify the case of personal discipline as such a “law” as the ones of physics and rationality; a law is definite and set-in-stone. The existence of (subjective) morality is proven by the very concept of the moral predicament — what to do when the law says one thing, but our conscience tells us another thing. So what happens when your conscience tells you that maybe stoning this one kid to death isn’t quite the right way to handle it, even if the “moral law” says that it’s “right?” Do you just blindly set away your personal feelings and accept that the “moral law” knows what is right better than you do? If so, you are not practicing morality, you are practicing law theology.
It is fashionable today to give human rights to everyone.
A cynical raving that I do not accept.
that’s whats will be right tomorrow to the moral relativist.
Not to me.
You called me daft for coming to this conclusion,
No, I called you daft for insisting that I am somehow obligated to worship Hitler and his views simply because I cannot say that they are “objectively wrong” — which, as I have explained *many* times, is only even necessary in your view, not my own. And I gently implied it again later because you continuously ignore things that I say in favor of reinforcing your own preconceived stereotypes.
Well Jean-Paul Sartre, believed that there is no objective meaning to life. Therefore, according to Sartre, man must create his own values. Sartre protested against the Nuremberg trials of Nazi War Criminals.
(1) Atheist are not like Christians; we’re not connected by some social link, we aren’t connected through our beliefs (or lack thereof). We just “are.”
(2) As such, I am not obligated to give half a damn what any other “atheist” says about something; as I’ve told you before, if a man with all the scientific credentials in the world came to me and said, “The solar eclipse occurs because Genbu the Giant Turtle is blotting out the sun with his shell,” I would know that he was incompetent, regardless of his so-called credentials.
(3) Just in case you didn’t hear that, or somehow read all of it without getting the point — I don’t care what another atheist says! I’m not bound by their way of thinking, I’m bound by my own. Argue with the consequences of my beliefs, not theirs. If you insist on doing otherwise, then there’s nothing I can say, because I do not hold their views.
Sartre correctly realized that the Nazis were being judged by universal law (i.e. crimes against humanity). Whereas the trial assumed that such a law existed, Sartre believed it did not. The democracies had no right to judge the Nazis if all values were relative to different cultures or different individuals.
It doesn’t matter why they were being tried; call it “crimes against nature,” or call it “mass murder in the utmost degree.” They killed a lot of people. By what system (aside from your own horribly-misconstrued interpretation of my own) is a thing like that permissible, in any sense? Who is there in this world that stands to gain from opposing such a punishment? If you do oppose such a punishment, you are basically saying, “It’s okay if someone murders me, I don’t care.” Because you are establishing that killing is an acceptable act. How is that hard for you to understand?
Tim on what basis would you persecute the Nazi’s if you were the lawyer at Nuremberg?
I can’t go into details because I’m not a lawyer, but I can say that I wouldn’t “persecute” anyone, as I don’t believe in persecution. I would, however, prosecute them, and the possible charges are endless and numerous. See above paragraph.
As for “who made me king,” nobody did. The jury decides what they are guilty of, not I. Did it ever occur to you to wonder why we need human judges, if in fact there is such an absolute moral law? Should it not be readily obvious to all? If so, why is such a thing as a judge or a jury necessary?
hat you didn’t like their morality? Again who made you King? They were just obeying orders.
Orders that they had a choice to disobey. I made this post much earlier:
“On intent vs. action; sometimes, the intent of an action is enough to justify the action itself, even if the action brings about negative results. However, other times, the action may be deemed too negligent or obviously-preventable (or obviously-negative) to justify the intent.
Who is to decide the ramifications thereof? A human jury, of course. And a human judge.”
Why should they think there was a higher morality than the Hitler’s that they were responsible for?
Their own beliefs were irreconcilable with ours; hence, conflict.
Do you really see that much “wrong” with someone standing up for the idea that it’s not permissible to kill people? Or does it just irk you to see people standing up for that principle without attributing it to your god? Why, I wonder?
“Quentin Smith claims that a serial killer’s murdering people is intrinsically good because it satisfies his desires. Now this good just happens to be overridden by the greater good of his victims’ getting to live and satisfy their desires. But, nevertheless, on his theory he says that a serial killer’s murdering people is intrinsically good.
I do not care what Quentin Smith claims.
Another example: Quentin says that love relationships are not intrinsically good. He says, “the primary reason love is good is that it satisfies our desires to love and be loved.” But again, such a self-centered justification is morally repugnant. He also denies that friendship, knowledge, health, and any other such thing is intrinsically good. (Smith, Ethical and Religious Thought as quoted by William Lane Craig)
I do not care what else Quentin Smith says.
Union College NY, Atheist Professor Taylor says:
The modern age, more or less repudiating the idea of a divine lawgiver, has nevertheless tried to retain the ideas of moral right and wrong, not noticing that in casting God aside, they have also abolished the conditions of meaningfulness for moral right and wrong as well…. Thus, even educated persons sometimes declare that such things as war…or the violation of human rights, are ‘morally wrong,’ and they imagine that they have said something true and significant.
Yeah, that’s what I thought. You haven’t even been reading my responses. I’ll bet you just skim each of my posts to see if I’ve said, “Yes, you’re right!” yet, and if I haven’t, you just reach into your bag of fallacies and pull out another handful of machine-gun arguments.
Educated people do not need to be told, however, that questions such as these have never been answered outside of religion.
I’ve answered several of them here. You’d know if you were reading and comprehending what I’ve been writing.
“Contemporary writers in ethics, who blithely discourse upon moral right and wrong and moral obligation without any reference to religion, are really just weaving intellectual webs from thin air; which amounts to saying that they discourse without meaning.”
Such discourse is rooted in emotional connection and causation; you keep talking about “Teh Material Worldviews!” but what you ignore is the part which desires to satisfy our human nature. If we take into account the nature of our humanity, a lot of things that you refuse to see suddenly make very much sense — if we operate on the assumption that human is neither “inherently good” nor “inherently evil,” but posesses the potential to do both great things and terrible things, and we dedicate our existence to trying to aim for the things that satisfy our consciences and our humanity, then the results you claim to fear simply will not ever happen. Such uniform, hostile beliefs simply never will permeate every single member of humanity; our nature is too diverse.
Short version: Even if, by some nightmare scenario, Hitler came back from the dead and took over the world, there would always be people who opposed him. They were present in WWII Germany, and they would be present in the future if that happened. If you deny this, then there is no reason to continue this discussion.
Now in fairness you may complain: But these Atheists do not speak for me. But I am not arguing that, I’m arguing that these atheists have logically and rationally arrived at the SAME conclusion that I have. They have invariably said, if there is no Objective/Absolute standard giver, no one and I mean no one can say that Mother Teresa is any different than Hitler.
No; what I read there was that they were saying Hitler cannot be “objectively wrong” whereas MT cannot be “Objectively right.” That’s a massively different statement than saying that there is no difference between them; just that I perceive that difference as being rooted in their actions, not in some sorcerous definition of “right and wrong.”
Daft? Ask Russell and Sartre, Smith, Taylor and Ruse if they are daft too. They after all derived those conclusions long before I did.
People like you sometimes make me wonder why I bother….you are so obviously, furiously bent on trying to portray my view as some kind of Hitler-sympathizing gospel. Is it that you can’t listen, or you won’t? I just don’t understand; I’m somewhat at a loss.
P.S.
Even if we did assume that everything you say here is true….even if we ignored all of the rational discourse that goes against what you say….it still doesn’t say a damn thing about the ontological nature of “objective morality.” All you’ve succeeded in showing is that OM is useful, in that it allows us to overstep having to actually justify why we think something is “right” or “wrong, using the difficult philosophical principles that accompany consideration of such matters.
Since I’m confident you’ll just ignore the rest of what I’ve posted, I’ll go ahead and posit this: So what? What if assuming the existence of OM is useful because it allows us to make instantaneous snap judgments? How does that make it real, any more than positing that it is less useful that subjective morality makes it “not real?”
Neil, regarding Nuremberg. I’m assuming you are not saying ‘without morality it would be immoral to prosecute the Nazis’. That would be a nonsensical statement – if there’s not morality then you cannot say something is immoral, right?
So instead I assume you are saying it would be ILLOGICAL to prosecute. Could you explain your reasoning here? What’s illogical about a society taking steps to prevent itself being attacked? Can we both agree that niether lions or viruses can be described as ‘immoral’? And yet we don’t say that it is illogical to protect ourselves from lions or to take steps to prevent the spread of viruses.
If you follow the implications of your logic, one could not take a flu jab without first having a discussion about whether the virus was ‘evil’ or not. This would be absurd, surely?
You quote a load of ‘atheists’. Tim already dealt with how you misinterpret them, but here’s a little added point. Michael Ruse expressly denies that he is an atheist, by the way. That’s strike two on ‘bogus atheists’, you guys need to be more careful.
Now in reply I could quote the 19th century Reverend Thornton Stringfellow, who argued passionately that slavery was a Biblical institution. He was quite sincere. Do you take that to represent you? How do you distance your views from him? Same bible.
To quote Russell Glasser (who IS an atheist):
“Stringfellow strongly argued that the Old Testament was explicitly pro-slavery, and having read both the Bible and the speech, I feel like his arguments do have merit. Why don’t we just make an agreement that you cannot judge Jesus Christ by the behavior of his followers, good or bad? Likewise, why not agree that a person such as Joseph Stalin does not represent any kind of coherent atheistic philosophy, and refrain from saying (as you frequently do) that this is where atheism inevitably leads? I am an atheist, and I have no more interest in setting up political prisons or Gulags than you have in owning slaves.”
“What if I were to say Mother Teresa didn’t let the weak die but instead propagated their genes in society and that was bad for society.”
Neil, unfortunately ‘let the weak die’ is pretty much what MT DID do. She was convinced that suffering brought the sick closer to God, and so didn’t even make much of an effort to administer pain relief, despite the millions she received in donations from well meaning people. As you say, she ‘like to hug people’, but unfortunately she didn’t do much else.
Of course when SHE got ill she made sure she got the best health care available.
Anyway, how are you evaluating ‘bad for society’? What criteria are you using? And how are you defining ‘weak’ too? Very subjective statements you are throwing around Neil, which seem to say more for YOUR views. I see the sick as people to cure or relieve their suffering (unlike Theresa). I don’t see them as weak. And ‘good for society’ is surely looking after the vulnerable? Bill Gates might have been seen as ‘weak’ by some (myopic, physically feeble), but you wouldn’t argue that his survival was ‘bad for society’, unless you were a raving Mac nut. Ditto Steven Hawking.
It seems that we can’t seem to communicate here. I expressly said that you don’t NEED to adhere to what other atheists said. Oh dear, what part of that did you miss? It sounds like you wrote all that – THEN ran in to what I said at the end and didn’t’ want to delete all that indignation that you’d spent time on.
Forgive me if as a result I just skimmed over your subsequent needless indignation about having to adhere to what other atheists said or your thus irrelevant comments about me having to adhere to what other Christians said. We agree that none of us need to do that. My point was quite simply, there are non-daft people on your side of the fence who think that way so stop calling people names.
To whit I showed how many atheists indeed think there is a logical connection between not having any standard of morality to not being able to condemn the Nazi’s, showing that it is indeed a logical derivation and not daft. (As you guessed I meant prosecute, but after misspelling it, my Mozilla spell checker offered persecute and I must have accepted it with my time constraints).
However if you keep missing this point, I have to assume that you get it but hate to admit it. If you can’t get this point, ah well. Others reading this will.
As to Ruse not being an atheist, my bad, surely we are willing to consider arguments from non Atheists as well. Again my point was to show that if there is no objective morality then you really have not basis on which to prosecute the Nazi’s as Sartre pointed out.
Now I don’t mind you saying: Sartre was an idiot on this issue. But then say it.
You’ve both seemed to conveniently create strawman arguments left and right. I believe we’ll be able to communicate better if you tried a bit harder to understand my primary points. I am trying to understand your points when it is relevant to the blog post.
As far as skimming. Yes you are absolute correct, I do skim (I have real job…designing real chips and next generation electronics, LCD backpanels, 3D LCD panels, networking 100Gb/s ASICs, FPGAS, systems, you know what, so if while I skim I see that you are off the central topic, i.e. Objective Morality and it’s consequences I ignore it ). So I would suggest you keep it short and pithy and to the point. Indignation, ungentlemanly behavior etc, will just result in my ignoring what you say. I frankly just don’t have time for that juvenile stuff.
For example: Strawman: If Hitler won the war. It’s not relevant if a few people objected (I’m sure many would), but my point was clear, many wouldn’t, the fashion would have changed. Are these masses right or wrong in their assessment of what Hitler did. Why do you keep repeating over and over that a few people would object. That’s obviously not the point. If it’s not obvious, it should be now.
But on the whole, why don’t you keep your posts a bit shorter and let’s keep to one point at a time.
See this is where I wonder if I’m dealing with a bunch of juvenile conspiracy nutcases.
Mother Teresa let the sick suffer and didn’t give them medicine. What sort of conspiracy nonsense is this coming from. But I guess it does go to show. If you are an Atheist, you will hate someone like Mother Teresa and will come up with all sorts of nonsense about her.
Funny when you make a statement like this about a person I personally knew and who used to come over to our home whenever she was in town and with whom my parents have worked with (and have helped supply and give medicine to the sick contrary to what you gullibly have believed from probably a fellow atheist) you just showed your biases.
See it’s such an indication of the absence of an objective morality- you despise Mother Teresa for what she did for the poor and weak and try to now justify it with lies. You just didn’t expect me to have a personal relationship with her (talking about skimming you must have skimmed over that part above).
So you DO think Mother Teresa was close to Hitler (maybe not as bad, but certainly bad).
“See this is where I wonder if I’m dealing with a bunch of juvenile conspiracy nutcases.”
And I think I’m dealing with someone who has no understanding of evolution, but is content to spout off as if he does, even when he’s been carefully and patiently corrected on the fallacies that he keeps doling out.
“To whit I showed how many atheists indeed think there is a logical connection between not having any standard of morality to not being able to condemn the Nazi’s”
Talk about skim reading. When did those people say ‘we can’t condemn the Nazis?’.
“We agree that none of us need to do that.”
John Field doesn’t seem to, and my post was at least as much aimed at him.
“However if you keep missing this point, I have to assume that you get it but hate to admit it. If you can’t get this point, ah well. Others reading this will.”
I carefully explained why would prosecute the Nazis. I’m guessing that you get MY point but are deliberately pretending not to.
Oh dear, what part of that did you miss? It sounds like you wrote all that – THEN ran in to what I said at the end and didn’t’ want to delete all that indignation that you’d spent time on.
What?
Forgive me if as a result I just skimmed over your subsequent needless indignation about having to adhere to what other atheists said or your thus irrelevant comments about me having to adhere to what other Christians said. We agree that none of us need to do that. My point was quite simply, there are non-daft people on your side of the fence who think that way so stop calling people names.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I suspected.
To whit I showed how many atheists indeed think there is a logical connection between not having any standard of morality to not being able to condemn the Nazi’s, showing that it is indeed a logical derivation and not daft. (As you guessed I meant prosecute, but after misspelling it, my Mozilla spell checker offered persecute and I must have accepted it with my time constraints).
And, as I have explained multiple times, I disagree with that assessment. And I have explained why I disagree with that assessment. So what do we have left? The assertion that “other people think that way.” Well, that’s great. But I don’t. So what’s your point, then? Is there something else I’m supposed to pick up on?
However if you keep missing this point, I have to assume that you get it but hate to admit it. If you can’t get this point, ah well. Others reading this will.
I’m not even sure how to handle that, except to point it out as evidence that you clearly *are* jetting your own stereotypes instead of listening.
Again my point was to show that if there is no objective morality then you really have not basis on which to prosecute the Nazi’s as Sartre pointed out.
And my point was that we do have a basis; it’s just not rooted in Objective Morality.
You’ve both seemed to conveniently create strawman arguments left and right.
Such as?
As far as skimming. Yes you are absolute correct, I do skim (I have real job…designing real chips and next generation electronics, LCD backpanels, 3D LCD panels, networking 100Gb/s ASICs, FPGAS, systems, you know what, so if while I skim I see that you are off the central topic, i.e. Objective Morality and it’s consequences I ignore it ).
Oh, please forgive me, you have a real job! Not like my pretend job. So sorry, excuse me, I’ll be more considerate in the future >:/
Look, I don’t care if you don’t want to read everything I type. But if you don’t read it, it doesn’t make much sense to argue with it as though you have.
Indignation, ungentlemanly behavior etc, will just result in my ignoring what you say. I frankly just don’t have time for that juvenile stuff.
AAAAnyway…..
If Hitler won the war. It’s not relevant if a few people objected (I’m sure many would), but my point was clear, many wouldn’t, the fashion would have changed.
And this kind of stands towards my earlier point: You’re arguing that, by my standard, whatever is most popular is what “is;” i.e. that if enough people think it’s true, it somehow “becomes true.” That’s not the case. Hence what I said about Hitler winning the war; so what if everyone thinks it’s true? Does that make it true? Does the fact that not enough people believe it make it “not true?”
What I am saying when I say, “[I believe] there is no objective morality,” is not, “Humans lay down the law of what is objectively moral.” It is not, “Whatever most people think, is what is objectively right.” It is, “there is no such thing as objectively right.” No matter how many people lean to one end of the spectrum or another, there is never a point at which the “objective moral truth” manifests itself as a result of human behavior or deduction. There is no “objective center,” and no amount of human pressure towards one end or the other can change that. That is what I am saying when I say that I believe there is no objective morality.
See it’s such an indication of the absence of an objective morality- you despise Mother Teresa for what she did for the poor and weak and try to now justify it with lies.
On what basis do you mean to say that someone else “despises” someone who helps the poor and sick? Assuming that what you say is true (I personally have no idea, I know next to nothing about Mother Theresa aside from what my mother — who has a great deal of respect for her — has told me), why would someone actively despise that someone is helping someone else?
I guess what I mean is, if you’re going to make such accusations, perhaps they could at least be realistic?
“Funny when you make a statement like this about a person I personally knew … you just showed your biases.”
I hadn’t skim read the part about you being mates with her, but didn’t see how it was supposed to make me write any differently. If you’d claimed to be a family friend of Hitler it wouldn’t have affected my post either!
You see no irony in accusing ME of bias about a person you admit to being a friend of? Don’t you think that you are more likely to be biased than me on this issue? The charges I could make against MT are not conspiracy theories, they are quite mainstream accusations made against her. They are a matter of record.
Wiki: “Mother Teresa accepted donations from the autocratic and corrupt Duvalier family in Haiti, and openly praised them. She also accepted 1.4 million dollars from Charles Keating, involved in the fraud and corruption scheme known as the Keating Five scandal, and supported him before and after his arrest. The Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles, Paul Turley, wrote to Mother Teresa asking her to return the donated money to the people Keating had stolen from, one of whom was “a poor carpenter”. The donated money was not accounted for, and Turley did not receive a reply.[47]”
You weren’t her only friend. But I wouldn’t place you in the same company as the Duvalier family, Neil. I don’t see the point of arguing over her any further though. Try to respond to my post about Nuremberg.
“When did those people say ‘we can’t condemn the Nazis?”
Did you miss Sartre above?
Andrew: I was not speaking bout my biases of Mother Teresa, I was speaking about my EXPERIENCE with Mother Teresa. Do you see a difference? One could be hearsay, the other you’d have to say I was lying.
Tim: Try reading Andrew’s posts as well.
“See this is where I wonder if I’m dealing with a bunch of juvenile conspiracy nutcases.”
So much for mutual respect.
“If you are an Atheist, you will hate someone like Mother Teresa and will come up with all sorts of nonsense about her.”
That doesn’t follow.
“So you DO think Mother Teresa was close to Hitler (maybe not as bad, but certainly bad).”
This might be hard for you to believe, but even a moral relativist can feel just as morally offended as an absolutist.
If you will give a working definition of what you mean when you say “moral” these kinds of arguments are easier. It’s a confusing enough subject even after the terms are defined.
“One could be hearsay, the other you’d have to say I was lying.”
Neil, you were happy to say something must be made up, simply because it came from an atheist. I suggest you drop your defence of Theresa, which is irrelevant to your general point anyway.
Now, I addressed your Nuremberg question. Either reply to it, or don’t.
“And this kind of stands towards my earlier point: You’re arguing that, by my standard, whatever is most popular is what “is;” i.e. that if enough people think it’s true, it somehow “becomes true.”
That’s not the case. ”
OK so now we are getting somewhere. if that’s not the case, what is your standard and where did it come from? This blog is about it coming from our DNA and about how unless it is Objective, it’s meaningless to say there is a standard or to judge anyone else by that standard.
Tim you have basically agreed with me: You said:
Neil: But the real issue here is that you cannot fault Hitler then.
Tim: Not objectively, no. Again, as I’ve explained, that is not necessary in order to oppose such a belief system.
So we agree that you cannot say Hitler was objectively wrong. Good.
The disagreement is that you don’t think that objective morality is necessary.
I said it was necessary because you end up logically with what Sartre said.
You said you don’t care what Sartre, Smith and one according to one of you a non-atheist says.
OK I can accept that.
I think it is. As I said earlier we Objective Moralists think that moral laws are like physical laws. They must be discovered but they are not up for voting. Earlier one of you confused objective moral laws with those laws that we have legislated. I hope I don’t need to go into the difference too much. One we discover, the other we “vote” to legislate. If they end up the same, we are better off. When they, contradict, pain is coming down the line to one or many or all.
I didn’t bring up Peter Singer, but he also argues in the same vein.
As to your pretend job, I’m sorry that your job is just a pretend one. I did not mean to mock it. I was not aware that there were these kinds of jobs out there. It seems some of us have real jobs and some don’t. I don’t mean to pick on those of you who only have pretend jobs. (Yes, I’m kidding).
“So instead I assume you are saying it would be ILLOGICAL to prosecute. Could you explain your reasoning here? What’s illogical about a society taking steps to prevent itself being attacked? Can we both agree that niether lions or viruses can be described as ‘immoral’? And yet we don’t say that it is illogical to protect ourselves from lions or to take steps to prevent the spread of viruses.”
Is this the Nuremberg question you were asking about?
We had WON the war. The Nazis were gone we didn’t need to protect ourselves from these guys. This was about prosecuting the ones we had in prison. There was no “preventing ourselves from being attacked” going on here.
I think it is. As I said earlier we Objective Moralists think that moral laws are like physical laws. They must be discovered but they are not up for voting.
I think it’s easy to agree that some form of morality is useful, whatever that form may be. The problems with claims that OM is something that objectively exists outside of our consciousness are twofold:
-) In defining moral consciousness as a “law,” we’re challenging the very definition of morality; if morality is defined by objective law, then what do you call that which is not governed by that objective law, but still helps to resolve moral dilemmas — as I said earlier, the stoning the kid scenario. If the “moral law” is set in stone, then there exists the potential for loopholes (as with any law). And when we come to those loopholes, we must rely on some kind of personal judgment; there isn’t another objective law that has been laid down for every possible loophole situation with regard to dealing with the first objective law. If there was, then the scope of what exactly defines “moral absolutes” would be so grandiose and all-encompassing that it would no longer mean anything; as with the infinitely-existing Metaphysical Avatars mentioned earlier. It’s impossible to set something in stone, and then set in stone every possible way to deal with what happens when that first set-in-stone ruling collides with itself. When two “objective moral truths” collide, if there exists a third “objective moral truth” that deals with how to resolve those first two, then we have a paradox; because we can take the situation formed by those three “moral truths” and carry it over until we find a situation where the three of them intersect with a fourth moral truth…..and we can keep doing this over and over forever and ever until we have a code so inexplicably complex that it doesn’t actually tell us anything.
-) Nobody has been able to define exactly what the difference is between “What I feel (subjective moral truth)” and “What Is (objective moral truth).” I have only seen instances of someone’s subjective truth being cited as evidence to “prove” the existence of some “objective moral truth.” To which I have repeatedly (and to no answer) asked, “How do you know that that isn’t just what you feel? How can you tell that it’s something that extends beyond you?”
As to your pretend job, I’m sorry that your job is just a pretend one. I did not mean to mock it. I was not aware that there were these kinds of jobs out there. It seems some of us have real jobs and some don’t. I don’t mean to pick on those of you who only have pretend jobs. (Yes, I’m kidding).
lol i c wut u did thar
We had WON the war. The Nazis were gone we didn’t need to protect ourselves from these guys. This was about prosecuting the ones we had in prison. There was no “preventing ourselves from being attacked” going on here.
Yes, but as anybody could tell you, if you let one instance of gratuitous offense or violence — however “moral” or “immoral” or “irrelevant” you find it — then that allows for others to come after the fact and repeat the same offense. So even regardless of moral values — based only on the fact that people want to stay alive, and so they protect themselves — it makes perfect sense to punish someone who has tried to do something to that effect, because it sets up a consequence that discourages people from taking that same action again in the future.
Thanks Tim,
let’s see if we can start this afresh with no hard feelings. I think there is much to learn from each other even if we never agree, at least we can see where we disagree without resorting to strawmen. I say that as it seems that you think I’ve been creating them. It’s not been my intention in any way. After all if you are right, it serves little purpose for me to not realize that sooner than later.
Let’s make a deal. If you can try to keep your posts short, (and I will try too), I’ll promise to read them more carefully. And perhaps this will be more informative and fun.
Your last post has lots of deep points in it. Let me take some time to review it and respond later this week.
Thanks
Neil
“The Nazis were gone we didn’t need to protect ourselves from these guys. This was about prosecuting the ones we had in prison. There was no “preventing ourselves from being attacked” going on here.”
So you’ve no concept of a deterrant, Neil? One of the main aims of Nuremberg was to provide an example for future generations. Great care was taken to make sure it wasn’t about ‘revenge’. Britain’s greatest hangman, Pierpointe, was brought in to ensure that the executions were humane. Great care was also taken that the trials themselves wouldn’t simply be ‘victor’s justice’, or a kangaroo court. The people in charge were well aware of the significance of the trials as a symbol and example for the future.
1. What would have been ‘logical’ about setting free dangerous people?
2. What message would it have sent to future dictators and their minions to have done so? Removing the excuse of ‘only following orders’ was immensely useful – it made it more likely that people would refuse such orders in the future.
Does this make it clearer?
Me: “When did those people say ‘we can’t condemn the Nazis?”
Neil: “Did you miss Sartre above?”
Sorry, you didn’t actually carry any QUOTES from Sartre, just paraphrased something, so I didn’t initially respond to it. What you said seemed unlikely given that Sartre was involved with a tribunal that he hoped would expose US war crimes in Vietnam.
Here’s what Sartre said about Nuremberg:
“Unfortunately, as is wont to happen whenever a new force is created by historical exigencies, this Tribunal was not free from serious faults. It has been said that it was a diktat of the victors to the vanquished and, which comes to the same thing, that it was not really being international: one group of nations was judging another. Would it have been more worthwhile to have taken the judges from neutral countries? I cannot say.
What is certain, however, is that, ALTHOUGH THE DECISIONS WERE PERFECTLY JUST BY ETHICAL STANDARDS [my emphasis], they did not convince all Germans. The legitimacy of the magistrates and their sentences is contested to this day. Also, it has been declared that, if the fortunes of war had been otherwise, a tribunal of the Axis could have condemned the Allies for the bombing of Dresden or for that of Hiroshima.”
So it seems that Sartre’s objections were practical and indeed ethical ones. It is a big mischaracterization to claim Sartre believed that without God it is impossible, or illogical, or nonsensical, to prosecute the Nazis.
Huh? I’m not sure you how got anything but a disapproval of judging one group based on the other groups ETHICAL values from that.
Also perhaps you should tell Ruse that he’s not an atheist: On McGraths book against Dawkins, Ruse writes this on the sleeve:
‘The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist, and
the McGraths show why.’
Michael Ruse, Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University
I could be wrong, but that seems to be a self label.
Tim I haven’t had time yet to read carefully respond to your last post, but I did want to comment on the “punishment for the sake of deterrence” argument that your presented.
Obviously since that punishment, we’ve seen that the execution of the Nazi’s had very little effect on deterrence what comes to mind are Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Saddam Husein, the Rwandan leaders and the men who gleefully carried out their orders, all men and women who despite that Nazi punishment example (some who saw that in their own lifetime) went on to murder and try to eliminate entire groups of people in similar way. Thousands of Gulag guards, torture chamber doctors and so on.
So if it is indeed not effective (and we can argue that) the question is: would you assume that it is therefore worthless to punish others like them and then merely constrain them so that they cannot kill anyone else in the future.
Of course constraining them in a prison also seems of no real value, because except for the leaders like Saddam we could argue: what could an ex-Nazi death camp guard or an ex Saddam torture official do without a concentration camp. He’s not going to go out and start torturing his next door neighbor, in fact one of the defenses of these Nazi’s was that they were all very mild mannered men (who were merely obeying orders).
It seems more symbolic than effective in that those who want to torture, rape and kill will do it. The fact that some got caught and punished only seems to imply that they should try to be on the winning side if you are going to do bad things.
By the way it’s of some value to note that many people were “brainwashed” to believe that Hitler was indeed doing what was good for all mankind.
So to summarize: the question is – if we can determine that punishments are not effective as a deterrent, could that mean we should not punish genocidal murderers with death or solitary imprisonment?
“if we can determine that punishments are not effective as a deterrent”
OK folks, we’ve got the last batch of small pox in this test tube. To use an analogy, it’s like we’ve got it in solitary confinement! However, as we’ve decided that keeping it in solitary confinement is no DETERRANT to it, we’re going to let it loose in the community to infect and kill our children. Does anybody have any objections to our plan?
“I could be wrong, but that seems to be a self label.”
I’m happy to do some googling to find other quotes when he says (I’m paraphrasing): ‘unlike Dawkins I’m not dogmatic enough to give myself the title ‘atheist’.”
“Huh? I’m not sure you how got anything but a disapproval of judging one group based on the other groups ETHICAL values from that.”
He wasn’t saying ‘there are no ethical values’. He was saying that the US were guilty too, not that ‘guilt’ doesn’t exist. Otherwise he wouldn’t have tried to get trials going for Vietnam. He would have said ‘guilt is relative, there is no such thing as guilt’.
Obviously since that punishment, we’ve seen that the execution of the Nazi’s had very little effect on deterrence what comes to mind are Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Saddam Husein, the Rwandan leaders and the men who gleefully carried out their orders, all men and women who despite that Nazi punishment example (some who saw that in their own lifetime) went on to murder and try to eliminate entire groups of people in similar way. Thousands of Gulag guards, torture chamber doctors and so on.
And yet, notice that the German Nazi Party doesn’t seem to have gotten out of control since?
So if it is indeed not effective (and we can argue that) the question is: would you assume that it is therefore worthless to punish others like them and then merely constrain them so that they cannot kill anyone else in the future.
So you ask me: Are we to not arrest murderers because people will still murder?
I respond: Of course not! Do you think the fact that the punishment exists is going to unanimously end all instances of the crime? I believe it was Turek himself arguing this same point about making homosexuality a crime, awhile back. So according to you, if we enact a punishment for deterrence’s sake, then if anybody anywhere even tries to commit the same time ever again, then our punishment’s purpose has “failed.” And that’s simply not realistic.
And it’s not as if punishment is solely a deterrant and nothing else. This is probably an unintentional fallacy that results when you try to jump from a Christian understanding of the world to a more secular one; there isn’t one Simple Penultimate Reason we do things (i.e. “it’s objectively right”). As for punishment as a deterrant, that entails a couple of things:
-) Keep the same party from offending again;
-) Provide an example of what might happen to others who perform the same actions; in many cases this deters would-be criminals from performing the same action, but the truly dedicated (say, the Hitler-minded) will of course pursue their ideals, believing that they have access to some Universal Moral Truth and that they have the right to force their beliefs on others in an “objective sense.” In this case, having an example only serves to perfect their cause — i.e. show them what mistakes not to make — but as Hitler himself demonstrated, often times such folks make the same mistakes as their predecessors in the same attempt (Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, anyone?). In any case, that’s hardly enough motivation to remove a process that weeds out all of the smaller would-be attempts and keeps us from having to get up every five minutes to deal with them. It consolidates the efforts into the dedicated few, whom we would’ve had to face anyway given their dedicated ideals.
tl;dr version: It’s not just about deterring the guilty party or his/her successors; it’s about deterring both.
I mean, seriously….compare today’s world to a hypothetical alternate world where the Nazis had never been punished for their crimes. What do you think would have happened? Also, in light of the Nazi fiasco, what do you think the Geneva Convention is/was? Rules of war; things that can be considered crimes even across the borders of nations, rules that all nations are aware of, concerning the treatment of human prisoners “for humanitarian concerns.” Not for “concerns of objective morality,” not for “concerns of holiness and righteousness,” but for humanitarian concerns — i.e. concerns regarding the well-being and agreed-upon definitions of fair treatment of human beings.
We don’t just imprison people for deterrant. But even if we did, the ‘it’s no deterrant’ argument would still be nonsense.
“Adolf Hitler was confident that the world would remain indifferent to the plight of the Jewish people he was planning to exterminate. After all, he reportedly told Nazi commanders before the outbreak of World War II, who remembers the Armenians?”
He actually roused his commanders by pointing out that there had been no ‘Nuremberg’ for Turkey’s genocide of the Armenians.
Sartre: “Unfortunately, as is wont to happen whenever a new force is created by historical exigencies, this Tribunal was not free from serious faults. It has been said that it was a diktat of the victors to the vanquished and, which comes to the same thing, that it was not really being international: one group of nations was judging another. Would it have been more worthwhile to have taken the judges from neutral countries? I cannot say.”
Neil: “Huh? I’m not sure you how got anything but a disapproval of judging one group based on the other groups ETHICAL values from that.”
I really don’t think you’re reading Sartre’s words very carefully, Neil. I know you are busy. He’s wary of the accusation of ‘victor’s justice’, and is saying this charge could have been avoided if the judges had been drawn from neutral countries.