Doesn't this line of reasoning render the commandment to "love thy neighbor" a nullity or a catch-22?
If I already love my neighbor without being commanded then there's no point in commanding it. "Breathe" and "eat food" aren't in the 10 commandments, even though they're clearly very important things, because people do these things automatically. If someone already does something there's no point in commanding them to do it.
If I don't already love my neighbor, but I read the commandment and think "God says I should love my neighbor, I better do what God says" then by your logic I'm not really loving my neighbor because I'm just doing it because God says so. "[I]f the only reason you care about your neighbors is because you feel forced to because God commanded it, then you cannot be said to actually love or care about them."
Imagine if a child steals something of yours, then later returns it and says he's very sorry. Is that child only doing so because his parent told him to, or is he doing so out of a genuine sense of wrongdoing and desire to make amends?
Do you recognize that there is a difference between these?
Do you recognize that these two things are not mutually exclusive? It's not a black-and-white question, there is a continuum between "genuine sense of wrongdoing" and "because [his parent/God] told him to." Perhaps at first the child only makes amends out of fear of punishment because he's too morally and emotionally immature to understand the wrongness of his actions. After a while, being forced to behave morally, he grows to understand the importance of moral behavior as its own reward.
Or how about this example: Do you think every thief is a purely immoral sociopath? Of course not, probably very few are. The action of stealing is certainly immoral, but the person committing the act will generally have a sense of right and wrong and will generally act morally in at least some facets of his life. I would venture to say that most thieves also understand that stealing is morally wrong, and feel bad about it to some degree. But they do it anyway, because some other consideration (the need for money, the "thrill" of stealing, etc.) is more salient to them than the immorality of their action.
For a Christian, presumably, morality is the highest good. No other considerations should trump it. For the thief, morality is still important, but not as important as Christianity says it should be; the thief doesn't prioritize moral action as highly as Christian theology says he should. If the thief were to become a devout Christian, he might start prioritizing morality higher because he knows God wants him to behave morally. This might lead him to stop stealing.
In this example, the thief knew his actions were wrong both before and after he adopted Christian theology, but Christian theology caused him to care more about the wrongness of his actions, thereby leading him to change his behavior. Thus he changed his behavior both "out of a genuine sense of wrongdoing" and "because [God] told him to."
Is he genuinely obeying the commandment not to steal, or is he just doing what he's told? How do we draw the line? Is it even a useful line to draw?
cloudman is claiming that he loves his neighbor as himself, but if God weren't around to command him to love his neighbor as himself, then he would become a psychopath because he couldn't possibly think of any reason why he shouldn't. That demonstrates that he does not actually love his neighbor as himself, because if he actually loved his neighbor as himself, that love — and the concern for the care and well-being that comes with it — would be the reason why he wouldn't.
Let's say this is how cloudman actually feels. Given that he feels this way, can you convince him that it's good to behave morally if there is no God?
We can malign cloudman all we want for saying this, but he's driving at the fundamental question at issue in the debate, isn't he? "How can I convince someone who lacks a subjective sense of morality that they ought to behave morally?"
The truly moral person does things not because someone has to make him do so, not because of lure of reward or fear of punishment, but because it is the morally correct thing to do. Thus, the person would continue to do the morally righteous thing even when that person has no one forcing him to do so, has no lure of reward, and no fear of punishment.
Then why have the ten commandments? Why should God be involved in morality at all? Heck, why should parents try to teach their children to act morally? It's only genuine if no one is telling you to do it, right?
Shouldn't we should stop teaching and commanding morality altogether? It's a waste of time at best since all the genuinely moral people would have behaved morally anyway.
So why does this commandment exist?
That's a question that has been debated over pretty much since there were Jews.
I think you're saying that Dahmer could subjectively determine hell isn't so bad after all. In other words, he could decide that hell isn't infinitely bad, and therefore conclude that the sick thrill he gets from killing is worth the penalty of hell.
You've read the Old Testament. I think God deserves more credit as a vindictive torturer than you're giving him. If an omnipotent God exists, I think we can imbue him with the power to make hell subjectively intolerable to everyone. Either hell represents infinite harm or at a minimum it represents such an enormous finite harm that no one could rationally value any finite earthly benefit as worth enduring hell for.
If that's true, then Dahmer could not rationally choose to commit murder knowing the penalty is eternity in hell. This provides an objectively sound argument for why he shouldn't kill.
You say "no one could rationally value", but evaluation necessarily precedes rationality. You determine what you value, then rationality tells you how to achieve it. You can't use rationality to determine what you ought to value. So to say it would be irrational for Dahmer to discount the value of Hell is to put the cart before the horse.
Yes, I'm being sloppy with my terminology.
As a matter of fact, Dahmer probably does value "not feeling pain" quite a bit, so the prospect of Hell carries enormous disutility. But that's not an objective rational conclusion; it's derived from his subjective aversion to pain. Now, you can say that God makes Hell whatever you're averse to, so if you're not averse to pain he makes it something else, but that still presumes that you're averse to [i]something[/i], which again is not necessarily true.
You're overthinking this. God is omnipotent. He can make hell objectively intolerable. If you're not averse to anything, he can make you averse to something and then make hell full of that something.
We can assume hell objectively represents infinite "bad," because God has the power to make it so.
And all of this afterlife consideration is ignoring the possibility that Dahmer is simply performing heavy - perhaps total - future discounting. Maybe in his evaluation system, any amount of utility [i]now[/i] oughtweighs any amount of disutility [i]later[/i]. And although this seems strange to us, who value the future somewhat, it is hard to argue that such an evaluation system is objectively irrational.
This is more interesting, but I still think there's something objectively problematic about discounting all future utility completely. (Remember, since hell is infinitely bad, a 100% discounting of all future utility would be required). We would almost think of this attitude as inhuman, since it would imply a complete lack of executive agency or planning. For example, a person with this attitude could never engage in any action which does not offer immediate utility. So the person could never, for example, get up out of his chair to get a drink of water unless the act of getting out of the chair itself offered utility in excess of continuing to sit; this person could not include the discounted future value of drinking water in their utility calculation, and thus could never form a coherent plan to stand up and get a drink of water. Any and all planning would be nonexistent and this person would surely require round-the-clock care like a profoundly disabled person. I'll have to give this point some thought.
But I maintain that for all people who do not completely discount future utility, it is irrational to choose hell over any alternative since hell represents infinite negative utility. For all practical purposes, this is everyone.
But I maintain that for all people who do not completely discount future utility, it is irrational to choose hell over any alternative since hell represents infinite negative utility. For all practical purposes, this is everyone.
What makes you think eternal suffering would not have diminishing returns? I don't think it makes sense to see Hell as infinitely bad, because there are countless logical constraints for God to work with. Human beings have certain psychological responses to suffering, after all, and included is the complete annihilation of personality - which obviously defeats the purpose.
Yes, God is omnipotent, but He can only make Hell the worst of possible worlds for you, which might not be so bad as to outweigh the utility gained by breaking some of His commandments. This is particularly true for some individuals who have experienced extreme suffering in their past and as a consequence place much more importance on their own enjoyment than their suffering.
These should all be tractable problems for an omnipotent being, right?
I mean, I'm not asking whether God can make a rock so heavy he can't lift it. I'm asking whether God can design hell and human beings in a configuration whereby hell would be intolerable to every human, and worth avoiding at any cost. I'm pretty sure God, if he existed, could handle this.
You're overthinking this. God is omnipotent. He can make hell objectively intolerable. If you're not averse to anything, he can make you averse to something and then make hell full of that something.
He has the power to do that. But we have to assume that he won't for some reason (probably to do with the free will argument). If it were on the table for him to alter our desires, then rather than altering Dahmer to be averse to pain and then torture him, he could simply alter Dahmer to not want to kill people in the first place. Seems like a more satisfactory solution all around.
(Remember, since hell is infinitely bad, a 100% discounting of all future utility would be required).
I'm not actually sure this is the case. First of all, again, it does not follow that Hell is infinitely bad - you yourself acknowledge that it might be maximally but still finitely bad, in which case of course the arithmetic would work normally. Secondly, even if it is infinitely bad, while infinities are not my area of expertise I know there are plenty of tricks for packing an infinity into a nonzero finite quantity.
We would almost think of this attitude as inhuman, since it would imply a complete lack of executive agency or planning. For example, a person with this attitude could never engage in any action which does not offer immediate utility. So the person could never, for example, get up out of his chair to get a drink of water unless the act of getting out of the chair itself offered utility in excess of continuing to sit; this person could not include the discounted future value of drinking water in their utility calculation, and thus could never form a coherent plan to stand up and get a drink of water. Any and all planning would be nonexistent and this person would surely require round-the-clock care like a profoundly disabled person. I'll have to give this point some thought.
I'll start by noting that even the mere potential for such a person to exist contradicts your objectivity assertion. It's also not necessarily the case that this person would need round-the-clock care, because people can and often do behave irrationally - so this one might irrationally go get water. And finally, we don't need to go to such an extreme. We can imagine a person performing total future discounting with a horizon of an hour or a day or even a year: before that point, they plan normally, but after that point, they don't give a damn.
I mean, I'm not asking whether God can make a rock so heavy he can't lift it. I'm asking whether God can design hell and human beings in a configuration whereby hell would be intolerable to every human, and worth avoiding at any cost. I'm pretty sure God, if he existed, could handle this.
There are a finite number of human beings, and I'm pretty sure all of them in fact have aversions, so yes, this is probably within God's power. But it does not get you all the way to objectivity. If every one of the finite number of human beings thought that Ringo was the best Beatle, that would not make Ringo objectively the best Beatle - it would merely be a subjective consensus. Objectivity is not determined by whether there happens to be nobody with an opposing point of view. It is determined by whether "having an opposing point of view" is a logically coherent notion.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I mean, I'm not asking whether God can make a rock so heavy he can't lift it. I'm asking whether God can design hell and human beings in a configuration whereby hell would be intolerable to every human, and worth avoiding at any cost. I'm pretty sure God, if he existed, could handle this.
There are a finite number of human beings, and I'm pretty sure all of them in fact have aversions, so yes, this is probably within God's power. But it does not get you all the way to objectivity. If every one of the finite number of human beings thought that Ringo was the best Beatle, that would not make Ringo objectively the best Beatle - it would merely be a subjective consensus. Objectivity is not determined by whether there happens to be nobody with an opposing point of view. It is determined by whether "having an opposing point of view" is a logically coherent notion.
You've convinced me, I'll concede hell is not "objectively intolerable." I'll go with "universally subjectively intolerable" mirroring your Ringo example. This doesn't change the central point of the argument. I'm positing as the premise of my argument that God exists and he designed hell and human beings in such a way that every real person would subjectively prefer to avoid hell at any cost.
If hell is universally subjectively intolerable, this fact compels every real human being to rationally choose to act morally. This is what the Christian is concerned about. In a world without this configuration of God and hell, some real people could be capable of rationally choosing to engage in immoral behavior. In a world with this configuration, it's impossible for any real person to conclude that any immoral action is rational.
Do you recognize that these two things are not mutually exclusive?
Of course they are. Either someone is genuinely sorry or is pretending to be sorry. There is no inbetween.
there is a continuum between "genuine sense of wrongdoing" and "because [his parent/God] told him to."
What.
Perhaps at first the child only makes amends out of fear of punishment because he's too morally and emotionally immature to understand the wrongness of his actions.
Then he's just doing things because someone told him to and is not genuinely sorry. See above.
In this example, the thief knew his actions were wrong both before and after he adopted Christian theology, but Christian theology caused him to care more about the wrongness of his actions, thereby leading him to change his behavior. Thus he changed his behavior both "out of a genuine sense of wrongdoing" and "because [God] told him to."
Which is not what we're talking about. We're talking about someone only performing an action because he perceives God as ordering him to do so.
Let's say this is how cloudman actually feels. Given that he feels this way, can you convince him that it's good to behave morally if there is no God?
We can malign cloudman all we want for saying this, but he's driving at the fundamental question at issue in the debate, isn't he? "How can I convince someone who lacks a subjective sense of morality that they ought to behave morally?"
You're conflating making a sound argument for something with convincing someone to believe something.
Indeed, cloudman has demonstrated regularly that someone can make a sound argument against him and he will still continue to believe otherwise.
Then why have the ten commandments? Why should God be involved in morality at all? Heck, why should parents try to teach their children to act morally? It's only genuine if no one is telling you to do it, right?
Shouldn't we should stop teaching and commanding morality altogether? It's a waste of time at best since all the genuinely moral people would have behaved morally anyway.
You have completely misinterpreted what I am trying to say.
Of course I am not arguing against moral instruction. That would be ridiculous.
So why does this commandment exist?
That's a question that has been debated over pretty much since there were Jews.
This is a non-answer.
Yeah, that's the point. "Why do the commandments exist?" is a question that has been debated over throughout the history of Judaism.
In this example, the thief knew his actions were wrong both before and after he adopted Christian theology, but Christian theology caused him to care more about the wrongness of his actions, thereby leading him to change his behavior. Thus he changed his behavior both "out of a genuine sense of wrongdoing" and "because [God] told him to."
Which is not what we're talking about. We're talking about someone only performing an action because he perceives God as ordering him to do so.
Why is that not what's happening here? Before, the thief knew it was wrong but stole anyway. After, he also knew it was wrong, but decided not to steal because God told him not to do morally wrong things.
The thief only performed the action of not stealing because he perceived God to be ordering him not to steal. If not for God, he would understand that stealing is wrong and he would feel guilty about it, but he would do it anyway.
Let's say this is how cloudman actually feels. Given that he feels this way, can you convince him that it's good to behave morally if there is no God?
We can malign cloudman all we want for saying this, but he's driving at the fundamental question at issue in the debate, isn't he? "How can I convince someone who lacks a subjective sense of morality that they ought to behave morally?"
You're conflating making a sound argument for something with convincing someone to believe something.
Indeed, cloudman has demonstrated regularly that someone can make a sound argument against him and he will still continue to believe otherwise.
How can I convince someone who lacks a subjective sense of morality that they ought to behave morally, assuming this hypothetical person is always convinced by logically sound arguments?
Why is that not what's happening here? Before, the thief knew it was wrong but stole anyway. After, he also knew it was wrong, but decided not to steal because God told him not to do morally wrong things.
The thief only performed the action of not stealing because he perceived God to be ordering him not to steal. If not for God, he would understand that stealing is wrong and he would feel guilty about it, but he would do it anyway.
So he was not virtuous before. I'm not sure where you're becoming confused.
How can I convince someone who lacks a subjective sense of morality that they ought to behave morally, assuming this hypothetical person is always convinced by logically sound arguments?
I'm lost. Are you asking how you convince a psychopath to behave morally? I have no idea. I'm not qualified in the field of abnormal psychology.
Why is that not what's happening here? Before, the thief knew it was wrong but stole anyway. After, he also knew it was wrong, but decided not to steal because God told him not to do morally wrong things.
The thief only performed the action of not stealing because he perceived God to be ordering him not to steal. If not for God, he would understand that stealing is wrong and he would feel guilty about it, but he would do it anyway.
So he was not virtuous before. I'm not sure where you're becoming confused.
Was he behaving morally after his conversion?
Remember you said:
The truly moral person does things not because someone has to make him do so, not because of lure of reward or fear of punishment, but because it is the morally correct thing to do. Thus, the person would continue to do the morally righteous thing even when that person has no one forcing him to do so, has no lure of reward, and no fear of punishment.
What should we make of the fact that belief in God was the "tipping point" that changed the thief's behavior form moral to immoral? Is the the thief a "moral person" now or not? Is this really a black-and-white question?
How can I convince someone who lacks a subjective sense of morality that they ought to behave morally, assuming this hypothetical person is always convinced by logically sound arguments?
I'm lost. Are you asking how you convince a psychopath to behave morally? I have no idea. I'm not qualified in the field of abnormal psychology.
I'm not asking you to cure his sociopathy, I'm asking you to make a reasoned argument for morality that doesn't rely on the subjective moral feelings of your audience. In other words, assume your audience has no subjective feelings about morality a priori and justify why they should behave morally.
If you can't do this, you're essentially conceding the Christian's point, which is that all morality is inherently subjective without God.
The truly moral person does things not because someone has to make him do so, not because of lure of reward or fear of punishment, but because it is the morally correct thing to do. Thus, the person would continue to do the morally righteous thing even when that person has no one forcing him to do so, has no lure of reward, and no fear of punishment.
And the thief does not fit that description.
I'm not asking you to cure his sociopathy, I'm asking you to make a reasoned argument for morality that doesn't rely on the subjective moral feelings of your audience. In other words, assume your audience has no subjective feelings about morality a priori and justify why they should behave morally.
I still don't understand what you're asking here.
You seem to be asking me to convince a sociopath to behave morally. The whole point of a sociopath is that he does not care about other people. So are you asking me to make an argument that being a rapist, a murderer, a serial killer, and a pedophile all at the same time is not morally sound? Or are you asking me to make an argument that would make the serial killer care if it is morally sound?
If you can't do this, you're essentially conceding the Christian's point, which is that all morality is inherently subjective without God.
This is not representative of all Christians. This is representative of cloudman, and, as I have been arguing, contrary to Christianity.
Also, as Blinking posted earlier:
the Roman, Greek, and most major Protestant denominations all agree that a good action which is not performed for its own sake is not truly good. If you poll priests and pastors whether we ought to act good to each other even if there is no God, the answer will be an overwhelming "Yes".
I'm not asking you to cure his sociopathy, I'm asking you to make a reasoned argument for morality that doesn't rely on the subjective moral feelings of your audience. In other words, assume your audience has no subjective feelings about morality a priori and justify why they should behave morally.
If you can't do this, you're essentially conceding the Christian's point, which is that all morality is inherently subjective without God.
A moral claim is a normative statement. Normative statements tell agents what they ought to do. By definition, a normative statement contains the possibility that the agents not do what it tells them - if they have no choice but to do what it tells them, then it's not normative, it's descriptive.
Furthermore, as we've already discussed, it is impossible to convince an agent to follow an imperative through reason except by appealing to values they already possess, because evaluation precedes reason. If you're a fan of bad SF, you already know the cliché of the perfectly logical supercomputer with vast information but no emotion. As a thought experiment, consider how such a machine would actually behave. In the stories it inevitably tries to destroy humanity, but in truth, with no values to motivate it, it would do... nothing. For any course of action its vast intellect can entertain, it has no answer to the question, "Why should I do that?" It is perfectly logical, but it does not value logic, so it has no reason to exercise its logic or to kill all these illogical creatures running around. It has vast information, but it does not value information, so it has no reason to seek out more. It is the ultimate slacker - it just doesn't care.
And yet, it would be premature of us to conclude that because the computer doesn't care and cannot be rationally persuaded to care about following some norm, that norm does not exist. After all, the computer doesn't even care about its own existence, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Clearly apathy does not possess any inherent ontological power: it's not generally the case that things exist by virtue of our caring about them. Now, perhaps a few special things do exist only by virtue of our caring about them. To take a tautological example, the care I have for my family only exists because I care about my family. But do norms have this property? It does not look like it. You will never get the computer to care about playing a game of chess, but it is nonetheless objectively true that there are good and bad strategies in chess - certain moves will get the black king checkmated, and certain moves will get the white king checkmated, and these consequences will be the same no matter who the player is or whether they place any value in chess. Maybe morality is objective like chess strategy.
Or maybe it isn't; maybe it's a different kind of norm whose truth is contingent on our evaluations for some reason. The question is still up in the air. The point here is that the existence of God, Heaven, and/or Hell affect the question not at all. The Christian wants to say that (a) morality must be subjective if God does not exist, but also (b) morality must be objective if God does exist. Neither (a) nor (b) is true.
Been a while since I looked at this thread. This is just a question to throw out there (maybe start the discussion again), but on what basis do we determine how people ought to behave if it isn't God's commandments? The reason I started the thread is I don't understand how people with a secular worldview account for the existence of ought without a God. In my mind the whole entire concept of ought is trivial without the existence of the Christian God or an understanding that borrows from the Christian worldview of God.
Been a while since I looked at this thread. This is just a question to throw out there (maybe start the discussion again), but on what basis do we determine how people ought to behave if it isn't God's commandments?
Let me answer with another question: on what basis do we determine that people ought to obey God's commandments? Whatever problems you have with the concept of "ought", God does not solve them. A nihilist can deny God's authority just as easily as the authority of any other moral system. And this is a serious question, because maybe the nihilist is right. We have no a priori guarantee that the concept of "ought" isn't trivial. We must be careful that we are not assuming that morals are real just because we'd prefer for them to be.
In my mind the whole entire concept of ought is trivial without the existence of the Christian God or an understanding that borrows from the Christian worldview of God.
This is a very parochial perspective even if for no other reason than that Christians did not originate and do not have a monopoly on the idea of God.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Been a while since I looked at this thread. This is just a question to throw out there (maybe start the discussion again), but on what basis do we determine how people ought to behave if it isn't God's commandments?
Let me answer with another question: on what basis do we determine that people ought to obey God's commandments? Whatever problems you have with the concept of "ought", God does not solve them. A nihilist can deny God's authority just as easily as the authority of any other moral system. And this is a serious question, because maybe the nihilist is right. We have no a priori guarantee that the concept of "ought" isn't trivial. We must be careful that we are not assuming that morals are real just because we'd prefer for them to be.
In my mind the whole entire concept of ought is trivial without the existence of the Christian God or an understanding that borrows from the Christian worldview of God.
This is a very parochial perspective even if for no other reason than that Christians did not originate and do not have a monopoly on the idea of God.
It would be nonsensical to apply the word ought to a rock or a molecule or a cell. It wouldn't make sense. So the question of how ought arises out of a purely materialistic universe is a mystery to me. How do immaterial moral imperatives arise from a purely material universe? If all we are is amoeba gazillion.0 why ought we to do anything? The only universe where the idea of ought makes any sort of sense is in a theistic universe.
It would be nonsensical to apply the word ought to a rock or a molecule or a cell. It wouldn't make sense. So the question of how ought arises out of a purely materialistic universe is a mystery to me. How do immaterial moral imperatives arise from a purely material universe? If all we are is amoeba gazillion.0 why ought we to do anything? The only universe where the idea of ought makes any sort of sense is in a theistic universe.
I understood your objection the first time you posted it. Please understand my response: if the idea of "ought" doesn't make sense in a materialistic universe, it doesn't make sense in a theistic universe either. (Not that "materialistic" and "theistic" are the only two possibilities. And the actual resolution to your problem lies in the fact that this distinction is entirely the wrong one to make. But we'll get to that later. One thing at a time.)
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
It would be nonsensical to apply the word ought to a rock or a molecule or a cell. It wouldn't make sense. So the question of how ought arises out of a purely materialistic universe is a mystery to me. How do immaterial moral imperatives arise from a purely material universe? If all we are is amoeba gazillion.0 why ought we to do anything? The only universe where the idea of ought makes any sort of sense is in a theistic universe.
I understood your objection the first time you posted it. Please understand my response: if the idea of "ought" doesn't make sense in a materialistic universe, it doesn't make sense in a theistic universe either. (Not that "materialistic" and "theistic" are the only two possibilities. And the actual resolution to your problem lies in the fact that this distinction is entirely the wrong one to make. But we'll get to that later. One thing at a time.)
OK...fair enough. I'll put it this way. Do you think that there is a cause for ought in the universe? From the Christian worldview God's commands are simply the things that he has caused to be "ought" in the universe. So God's commands are synonymous with ought.
To ask the question why ought we to obey them creates a false dichotomy (which I actually lazily did a few posts up) between ought and God's commands.
Been a while since I looked at this thread. This is just a question to throw out there (maybe start the discussion again), but on what basis do we determine how people ought to behave if it isn't God's commandments? The reason I started the thread is I don't understand how people with a secular worldview account for the existence of ought without a God. In my mind the whole entire concept of ought is trivial without the existence of the Christian God or an understanding that borrows from the Christian worldview of God.
Because social behaviors are key to human success as a species. So we evolve/learn to behave in those ways. We as a species create those "oughts" for each other for the overall good.
Of course from an individual's perspective there is no ultimate reason to actually DO anything at all once you strip away the sources of ought. Why care about survival as an individual, a species, whatever?
Been a while since I looked at this thread. This is just a question to throw out there (maybe start the discussion again), but on what basis do we determine how people ought to behave if it isn't God's commandments? The reason I started the thread is I don't understand how people with a secular worldview account for the existence of ought without a God. In my mind the whole entire concept of ought is trivial without the existence of the Christian God or an understanding that borrows from the Christian worldview of God.
Because social behaviors are key to human success as a species. So we evolve/learn to behave in those ways. We as a species create those "ou
ghts" for each other for the overall good.
Of course from an individual's perspective there is no ultimate reason to actually DO anything at all once you strip away the sources of ought. Why care about survival as an individual, a species, whatever?
Why is the success of the species the great ought from which all other oughts should flow?
Been a while since I looked at this thread. This is just a question to throw out there (maybe start the discussion again), but on what basis do we determine how people ought to behave if it isn't God's commandments? The reason I started the thread is I don't understand how people with a secular worldview account for the existence of ought without a God. In my mind the whole entire concept of ought is trivial without the existence of the Christian God or an understanding that borrows from the Christian worldview of God.
Because social behaviors are key to human success as a species. So we evolve/learn to behave in those ways. We as a species create those "ou
ghts" for each other for the overall good.
Of course from an individual's perspective there is no ultimate reason to actually DO anything at all once you strip away the sources of ought. Why care about survival as an individual, a species, whatever?
Why is the success of the species the great ought from which all other oughts should flow?
I didn't say that they "should" flow from it, but that they DO. Because ultimately these oughts are biological, they are evolved/taught behaviors that our species is built upon. No different than the individual behaviors that allow other animal groups to work together, just more complex.
OK...fair enough. I'll put it this way. Do you think that there is a cause for ought in the universe? From the Christian worldview God's commands are simply the things that he has caused to be "ought" in the universe. So God's commands are synonymous with ought.
To ask the question why ought we to obey them creates a false dichotomy (which I actually lazily did a few posts up) between ought and God's commands.
No, you don't get to define away the problem. And this is not just because I don't like that tactic (although I don't) -- it's because it does not work. By saying that "ought" simply means "what God commands", you are turning the proposition, "We ought to do what God commands", into a tautology. You seem to think this is a good thing, because it makes the statement logically unassailable: to question it is a self-contradiction (which is what I assume you meant by "false dichotomy"). And this is more or less true. But you accomplish this feat at the cost of robbing the statement of all real meaning. When two terms are synonymous, then you may substitute one for the other. So by your definition, "We ought to do what God commands" is the same as saying "God commands what God commands". And of course, this proposition does not tell us anything about how we should behave; it does not tell us anything at all. We can just as easily, and with equally unassailable truth, say that "Odin commands what Odin commands", or "Emperor Norton commands what Emperor Norton commands", or "Blinking Spirit commands what Blinking Spirit commands", or "Dogs are dogs", or "Cats are cats", or any other statement of the form A = A. They're all just redundant and pointless.
In short, "We ought to do what God commands" is only meaningful and interesting if "ought" is not defined as "what God commands". And this means you have to do actual logical work justifying that it is true. Just like you would for any other conclusion.
If God is all knowing and all powerful why would He create a universe where the things that ought to be done are not in perfect alignment with what He commands? Even if you want to define them differently God is the author of both His own commands and the immaterial laws that govern his universe. Why would God make them different?
I think God's commands are simply a declaration of what He has made to be ought, and I see no logical problems with that.
If God is all knowing and all powerful why would He create a universe where the things that ought to be done are not in perfect alignment with what He commands? Even if you want to define them differently God is the author of both His own commands and the immaterial laws that govern his universe. Why would God make them different?
I think God's commands are simply a declaration of what He has made to be ought, and I see no logical problems with that.
You say that the word "ought" is meaningless in an atheistic universe. But if this is the case, then it is just as meaningless in a theistic universe. The presence or absence of a God doesn't change the meanings of words; exactly the same dictionary can exist in either universe. And if a word does not mean anything, then not even an omnipotent God can create an object to which the word refers, not because of any limitation on his power but because there is simply nothing for him to create. So if "ought" is, as you say, meaningless, then God can't make a thing that ought to be done. It's like saying he can make a mimsy borogrove -- it's just nonsense. No matter what he creates, it will not be a mimsy borogrove. No matter what he creates, it will not be a thing that ought to be done.
But if God can make a thing that ought to be done, then "ought" must have a meaning. And we've already seen how the meaning cannot be "what God commands". So what is it? What is true about a thing that ought to be done that is not true about other things -- what facts define it? Write down that definition and put it in a dictionary, and remember that the same dictionary can exist in either a theistic or an atheistic universe. We don't need God to write a dictionary. So "ought" has the same meaning in an atheistic universe.
Now, "ought" might have a meaning in an atheistic universe and still not refer to anything real, the way "God" has a meaning but doesn't refer to anything real. However, you want to say that "ought" is impossible in such a universe, and as of yet we see no reason to believe that this is the case -- no logical contradiction between the definition of the word and the fact that God doesn't exist. After all, for us to see a contradiction, we would have to know specifically what the definition is. If we're going to remain abstract and just say that "ought" means something, you can't assume that something requires the presence of God any more than I can assume it requires the presence of Superman. You've got to, again, do the logical work. Provide a satisfactory definition and demonstrate how it is incompatible with atheism. (Fair warning: think very hard about the significance of the word "satisfactory". I do not mean satisfactory to you.)
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
If God is all knowing and all powerful why would He create a universe where the things that ought to be done are not in perfect alignment with what He commands? Even if you want to define them differently God is the author of both His own commands and the immaterial laws that govern his universe. Why would God make them different?
I think God's commands are simply a declaration of what He has made to be ought, and I see no logical problems with that.
Imagine that God created a universe where the concept of "ought" is meaningless or doesn't exist. If so, God might still command things to be done, even though there is no "ought" associated with his commands.
You must first show that the concept of "ought" exists in our universe, and then you can argue that God's commands are "simply a declaration of what He has made to be ought."
Why is the success of the species the great ought from which all other oughts should flow?
You've got it backwards. We were successful because we developed a sense of duty to one another. There is no 'should' here. The only way the human race could work is if we had co-evolved the system of social norms, morals, sense of duty, etc we needed.
Why is the success of the species the great ought from which all other oughts should flow?
You've got it backwards. We were successful because we developed a sense of duty to one another. There is no 'should' here. The only way the human race could work is if we had co-evolved the system of social norms, morals, sense of duty, etc we needed.
I agree with this statement, but I would point out it implies that the concept of a universal "ought" doesn't really exist. If morality evolved to maximize evolutionary fitness and "[t]here is no 'should' here," then all moral oughts can be rephrased as instrumental statements of the form "if you want X then do Y." For example, "if you want [survival/flourishing of the species], then [behave morally]."
This type of justification for morality doesn't really answer the question: "why should I behave morally if I don't care about the outcomes that morality is trying to achieve?" (a.k.a. "why should Dahmer care about morality?"). The answer is that Dahmer doesn't and shouldn't care. It is only by punishing or otherwise deterring him that society can force him to care.
I agree with this statement, but I would point out it implies that the concept of a universal "ought" doesn't really exist. If morality evolved to maximize evolutionary fitness and "[t]here is no 'should' here," then all moral oughts can be rephrased as instrumental statements of the form "if you want X then do Y." For example, "if you want [survival/flourishing of the species], then [behave morally]."
This type of justification for morality doesn't really answer the question: "why should I behave morally if I don't care about the outcomes that morality is trying to achieve?" (a.k.a. "why should Dahmer care about morality?"). The answer is that Dahmer doesn't and shouldn't care. It is only by punishing or otherwise deterring him that society can force him to care.
I don't understand this "I don't care" argument. I hear it a lot, but it doesn't make any sense to me.
We can all agree in advance that a person is free to say "I don't care" to whatever he wants. I can present someone with a proof of the Pythagorean theorem and they can say "I don't care." It doesn't make the Pythagorean theorem false or impugn the objectivity of mathematics as a discipline. It just means that person doesn't care about geometry. Well, so be it.
The same is true for ethics. If someone doesn't care about ethics, that is entirely a statement about that person's character and has nothing whatsoever to do with the validity of a particular ethical theory.
Interestingly, universal deterrents can exist only if universal morality does. Why? Well, what's a deterrent? It's basically something people don't want done to them. If a universal deterrent exists, then there is, roughly speaking, a way people don't want to be treated. From this, we can construct what Sam Harris calls "the worst possible misery for everyone:" a state of affairs in which everyone is being treated in this way. This, in turn, yields a metric over states of affairs: the further the distance from the worst possible misery, the better. That metric is (well, modulo some admittedly very important details) essentially an objective moral utility function.
Do you recognize that these two things are not mutually exclusive? It's not a black-and-white question, there is a continuum between "genuine sense of wrongdoing" and "because [his parent/God] told him to." Perhaps at first the child only makes amends out of fear of punishment because he's too morally and emotionally immature to understand the wrongness of his actions. After a while, being forced to behave morally, he grows to understand the importance of moral behavior as its own reward.
Or how about this example: Do you think every thief is a purely immoral sociopath? Of course not, probably very few are. The action of stealing is certainly immoral, but the person committing the act will generally have a sense of right and wrong and will generally act morally in at least some facets of his life. I would venture to say that most thieves also understand that stealing is morally wrong, and feel bad about it to some degree. But they do it anyway, because some other consideration (the need for money, the "thrill" of stealing, etc.) is more salient to them than the immorality of their action.
For a Christian, presumably, morality is the highest good. No other considerations should trump it. For the thief, morality is still important, but not as important as Christianity says it should be; the thief doesn't prioritize moral action as highly as Christian theology says he should. If the thief were to become a devout Christian, he might start prioritizing morality higher because he knows God wants him to behave morally. This might lead him to stop stealing.
In this example, the thief knew his actions were wrong both before and after he adopted Christian theology, but Christian theology caused him to care more about the wrongness of his actions, thereby leading him to change his behavior. Thus he changed his behavior both "out of a genuine sense of wrongdoing" and "because [God] told him to."
Is he genuinely obeying the commandment not to steal, or is he just doing what he's told? How do we draw the line? Is it even a useful line to draw?
Let's say this is how cloudman actually feels. Given that he feels this way, can you convince him that it's good to behave morally if there is no God?
We can malign cloudman all we want for saying this, but he's driving at the fundamental question at issue in the debate, isn't he? "How can I convince someone who lacks a subjective sense of morality that they ought to behave morally?"
Then why have the ten commandments? Why should God be involved in morality at all? Heck, why should parents try to teach their children to act morally? It's only genuine if no one is telling you to do it, right?
Shouldn't we should stop teaching and commanding morality altogether? It's a waste of time at best since all the genuinely moral people would have behaved morally anyway.
This is a non-answer.
Yes, I'm being sloppy with my terminology.
You're overthinking this. God is omnipotent. He can make hell objectively intolerable. If you're not averse to anything, he can make you averse to something and then make hell full of that something.
We can assume hell objectively represents infinite "bad," because God has the power to make it so.
This is more interesting, but I still think there's something objectively problematic about discounting all future utility completely. (Remember, since hell is infinitely bad, a 100% discounting of all future utility would be required). We would almost think of this attitude as inhuman, since it would imply a complete lack of executive agency or planning. For example, a person with this attitude could never engage in any action which does not offer immediate utility. So the person could never, for example, get up out of his chair to get a drink of water unless the act of getting out of the chair itself offered utility in excess of continuing to sit; this person could not include the discounted future value of drinking water in their utility calculation, and thus could never form a coherent plan to stand up and get a drink of water. Any and all planning would be nonexistent and this person would surely require round-the-clock care like a profoundly disabled person. I'll have to give this point some thought.
But I maintain that for all people who do not completely discount future utility, it is irrational to choose hell over any alternative since hell represents infinite negative utility. For all practical purposes, this is everyone.
These should all be tractable problems for an omnipotent being, right?
I mean, I'm not asking whether God can make a rock so heavy he can't lift it. I'm asking whether God can design hell and human beings in a configuration whereby hell would be intolerable to every human, and worth avoiding at any cost. I'm pretty sure God, if he existed, could handle this.
I'm not actually sure this is the case. First of all, again, it does not follow that Hell is infinitely bad - you yourself acknowledge that it might be maximally but still finitely bad, in which case of course the arithmetic would work normally. Secondly, even if it is infinitely bad, while infinities are not my area of expertise I know there are plenty of tricks for packing an infinity into a nonzero finite quantity.
I'll start by noting that even the mere potential for such a person to exist contradicts your objectivity assertion. It's also not necessarily the case that this person would need round-the-clock care, because people can and often do behave irrationally - so this one might irrationally go get water. And finally, we don't need to go to such an extreme. We can imagine a person performing total future discounting with a horizon of an hour or a day or even a year: before that point, they plan normally, but after that point, they don't give a damn.
There are a finite number of human beings, and I'm pretty sure all of them in fact have aversions, so yes, this is probably within God's power. But it does not get you all the way to objectivity. If every one of the finite number of human beings thought that Ringo was the best Beatle, that would not make Ringo objectively the best Beatle - it would merely be a subjective consensus. Objectivity is not determined by whether there happens to be nobody with an opposing point of view. It is determined by whether "having an opposing point of view" is a logically coherent notion.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
You've convinced me, I'll concede hell is not "objectively intolerable." I'll go with "universally subjectively intolerable" mirroring your Ringo example. This doesn't change the central point of the argument. I'm positing as the premise of my argument that God exists and he designed hell and human beings in such a way that every real person would subjectively prefer to avoid hell at any cost.
If hell is universally subjectively intolerable, this fact compels every real human being to rationally choose to act morally. This is what the Christian is concerned about. In a world without this configuration of God and hell, some real people could be capable of rationally choosing to engage in immoral behavior. In a world with this configuration, it's impossible for any real person to conclude that any immoral action is rational.
What.
Then he's just doing things because someone told him to and is not genuinely sorry. See above.
Which is not what we're talking about. We're talking about someone only performing an action because he perceives God as ordering him to do so.
You're conflating making a sound argument for something with convincing someone to believe something.
Indeed, cloudman has demonstrated regularly that someone can make a sound argument against him and he will still continue to believe otherwise.
You have completely misinterpreted what I am trying to say.
Of course I am not arguing against moral instruction. That would be ridiculous.
Yeah, that's the point. "Why do the commandments exist?" is a question that has been debated over throughout the history of Judaism.
Why is that not what's happening here? Before, the thief knew it was wrong but stole anyway. After, he also knew it was wrong, but decided not to steal because God told him not to do morally wrong things.
The thief only performed the action of not stealing because he perceived God to be ordering him not to steal. If not for God, he would understand that stealing is wrong and he would feel guilty about it, but he would do it anyway.
How can I convince someone who lacks a subjective sense of morality that they ought to behave morally, assuming this hypothetical person is always convinced by logically sound arguments?
I'm lost. Are you asking how you convince a psychopath to behave morally? I have no idea. I'm not qualified in the field of abnormal psychology.
Was he behaving morally after his conversion?
Remember you said:
What should we make of the fact that belief in God was the "tipping point" that changed the thief's behavior form moral to immoral? Is the the thief a "moral person" now or not? Is this really a black-and-white question?
I'm not asking you to cure his sociopathy, I'm asking you to make a reasoned argument for morality that doesn't rely on the subjective moral feelings of your audience. In other words, assume your audience has no subjective feelings about morality a priori and justify why they should behave morally.
If you can't do this, you're essentially conceding the Christian's point, which is that all morality is inherently subjective without God.
And the thief does not fit that description.
I still don't understand what you're asking here.
You seem to be asking me to convince a sociopath to behave morally. The whole point of a sociopath is that he does not care about other people. So are you asking me to make an argument that being a rapist, a murderer, a serial killer, and a pedophile all at the same time is not morally sound? Or are you asking me to make an argument that would make the serial killer care if it is morally sound?
This is not representative of all Christians. This is representative of cloudman, and, as I have been arguing, contrary to Christianity.
Also, as Blinking posted earlier:
Furthermore, as we've already discussed, it is impossible to convince an agent to follow an imperative through reason except by appealing to values they already possess, because evaluation precedes reason. If you're a fan of bad SF, you already know the cliché of the perfectly logical supercomputer with vast information but no emotion. As a thought experiment, consider how such a machine would actually behave. In the stories it inevitably tries to destroy humanity, but in truth, with no values to motivate it, it would do... nothing. For any course of action its vast intellect can entertain, it has no answer to the question, "Why should I do that?" It is perfectly logical, but it does not value logic, so it has no reason to exercise its logic or to kill all these illogical creatures running around. It has vast information, but it does not value information, so it has no reason to seek out more. It is the ultimate slacker - it just doesn't care.
And yet, it would be premature of us to conclude that because the computer doesn't care and cannot be rationally persuaded to care about following some norm, that norm does not exist. After all, the computer doesn't even care about its own existence, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Clearly apathy does not possess any inherent ontological power: it's not generally the case that things exist by virtue of our caring about them. Now, perhaps a few special things do exist only by virtue of our caring about them. To take a tautological example, the care I have for my family only exists because I care about my family. But do norms have this property? It does not look like it. You will never get the computer to care about playing a game of chess, but it is nonetheless objectively true that there are good and bad strategies in chess - certain moves will get the black king checkmated, and certain moves will get the white king checkmated, and these consequences will be the same no matter who the player is or whether they place any value in chess. Maybe morality is objective like chess strategy.
Or maybe it isn't; maybe it's a different kind of norm whose truth is contingent on our evaluations for some reason. The question is still up in the air. The point here is that the existence of God, Heaven, and/or Hell affect the question not at all. The Christian wants to say that (a) morality must be subjective if God does not exist, but also (b) morality must be objective if God does exist. Neither (a) nor (b) is true.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
This is a very parochial perspective even if for no other reason than that Christians did not originate and do not have a monopoly on the idea of God.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
It would be nonsensical to apply the word ought to a rock or a molecule or a cell. It wouldn't make sense. So the question of how ought arises out of a purely materialistic universe is a mystery to me. How do immaterial moral imperatives arise from a purely material universe? If all we are is amoeba gazillion.0 why ought we to do anything? The only universe where the idea of ought makes any sort of sense is in a theistic universe.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
OK...fair enough. I'll put it this way. Do you think that there is a cause for ought in the universe? From the Christian worldview God's commands are simply the things that he has caused to be "ought" in the universe. So God's commands are synonymous with ought.
To ask the question why ought we to obey them creates a false dichotomy (which I actually lazily did a few posts up) between ought and God's commands.
Because social behaviors are key to human success as a species. So we evolve/learn to behave in those ways. We as a species create those "oughts" for each other for the overall good.
Of course from an individual's perspective there is no ultimate reason to actually DO anything at all once you strip away the sources of ought. Why care about survival as an individual, a species, whatever?
Why is the success of the species the great ought from which all other oughts should flow?
I didn't say that they "should" flow from it, but that they DO. Because ultimately these oughts are biological, they are evolved/taught behaviors that our species is built upon. No different than the individual behaviors that allow other animal groups to work together, just more complex.
In short, "We ought to do what God commands" is only meaningful and interesting if "ought" is not defined as "what God commands". And this means you have to do actual logical work justifying that it is true. Just like you would for any other conclusion.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I think God's commands are simply a declaration of what He has made to be ought, and I see no logical problems with that.
But if God can make a thing that ought to be done, then "ought" must have a meaning. And we've already seen how the meaning cannot be "what God commands". So what is it? What is true about a thing that ought to be done that is not true about other things -- what facts define it? Write down that definition and put it in a dictionary, and remember that the same dictionary can exist in either a theistic or an atheistic universe. We don't need God to write a dictionary. So "ought" has the same meaning in an atheistic universe.
Now, "ought" might have a meaning in an atheistic universe and still not refer to anything real, the way "God" has a meaning but doesn't refer to anything real. However, you want to say that "ought" is impossible in such a universe, and as of yet we see no reason to believe that this is the case -- no logical contradiction between the definition of the word and the fact that God doesn't exist. After all, for us to see a contradiction, we would have to know specifically what the definition is. If we're going to remain abstract and just say that "ought" means something, you can't assume that something requires the presence of God any more than I can assume it requires the presence of Superman. You've got to, again, do the logical work. Provide a satisfactory definition and demonstrate how it is incompatible with atheism. (Fair warning: think very hard about the significance of the word "satisfactory". I do not mean satisfactory to you.)
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Imagine that God created a universe where the concept of "ought" is meaningless or doesn't exist. If so, God might still command things to be done, even though there is no "ought" associated with his commands.
You must first show that the concept of "ought" exists in our universe, and then you can argue that God's commands are "simply a declaration of what He has made to be ought."
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
I agree with this statement, but I would point out it implies that the concept of a universal "ought" doesn't really exist. If morality evolved to maximize evolutionary fitness and "[t]here is no 'should' here," then all moral oughts can be rephrased as instrumental statements of the form "if you want X then do Y." For example, "if you want [survival/flourishing of the species], then [behave morally]."
This type of justification for morality doesn't really answer the question: "why should I behave morally if I don't care about the outcomes that morality is trying to achieve?" (a.k.a. "why should Dahmer care about morality?"). The answer is that Dahmer doesn't and shouldn't care. It is only by punishing or otherwise deterring him that society can force him to care.
We can all agree in advance that a person is free to say "I don't care" to whatever he wants. I can present someone with a proof of the Pythagorean theorem and they can say "I don't care." It doesn't make the Pythagorean theorem false or impugn the objectivity of mathematics as a discipline. It just means that person doesn't care about geometry. Well, so be it.
The same is true for ethics. If someone doesn't care about ethics, that is entirely a statement about that person's character and has nothing whatsoever to do with the validity of a particular ethical theory.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.