Objective Morality 4

Northensun

Chef, What you lose as an ex-Christian:

To illustrate, just suppose suppose some Christians are sitting around a table at church planning a lunch for the next Sunday after the services. (AUB would probably inject that, being Christians, it is more likely they were up to no good such as planing to hate homos or burn some witches, but lets leave this viewpoint aside for now.) During the meeting a man shows up at the church door saying he is hungry and needs some money for food. The group of people at the table discuss the situation, and being humans, they express their feelings for the man's position, and some even empathize with this plight. Then someone pipes up, "We are commanded by Christ to help this person," and then recites some Bible reference. The group discusses the issue some more, and then, in this case,decides to help the person, at least partly influenced by the belief that this is what their religion requires.

Now suppose that a group of non-religious people is sitting around a similar table at the community center planning a lunch for the next Sunday afternoon as a fun activity for their neighborhood. During the meeting a man shows up at the center door saying he is hungry and needs some money for food. The group of people at the table discuss the situation, and being humans, they express their feelings for the man's position, and some even empathize with this plight. Perhaps the group decides to help the man, or maybe the decide to call the police and have him arrested for vagrancy. An ex-Christian at the meeting can not stand up and make an argument from a religious perspective that they are compelled to do anything.
THa case for helping the man becomes more difficult, after all if the groups merely sends him on his way with not help they have in no direct way deprived the man of his life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. Of course nothing stops any individual of the group from helping the man, perhaps just for their own satisfaction. But the argument fro helping the man based on some notion of common humanity is more difficult to formulate. I see this as a lose.

AUB argues that humans are basically good but have been corrupted by Christianity. Perhaps he is right that on balance more harm than good has been done. But I have trouble seeing that also abandoning the positive portions of religious teachings somehow strengthens the foundation of a moral society by un corking some repressed wellspring of inate human kindness.

Chef, what I am arguing is that I believe your positions against globalization, dehumanization, etc. are easier to support from a religious perspective than from a non-religious one.

ME

NorthenSun, You make a good argument but one I’ve tackled earlier, "christ" is just used as a justification for what their innate humanity wanted to do anyway, if all xtianity is is a justification then there are better ways to justify, more complex maybe but lacking the side effects. With so many better alternatives, which you don’t seem to have studied, why cling to this old and deseased carcass of a cult, which not only on balance has done more harm, but may well do even more in the future? It is used to justify good and evil don't forget, and the little good it does cannot be worth the bad that always goes with it, you cannot remove the fact that god or jesus or the bible can be used as the authority and justification for anything due to its pliable and contradictory nature, if you let xtianity function as a justification for good, then you let it for evil also, can you live with that?

Besides none of this changes the fact that xtianity is a lie, a Noble Lie maybe but on principle we should still oppose it, falsehood has a negative effect beyond the simpler moral dimensions. I've already dealt with the fact that most good xtians are really just humanists using a god or bible they know nothing about as the galvanising force they don't need, and as far as I'm concerned, waking up to the truth and getting to know a more positive philosophy, although not as "pat" as using a name to do good or evil is a more suitable approach for an intelligent species. We can do so much better than lies and crude authority, is it asking too much for mankind to try a little harder? Think, not just pick bits out of a bible that is mostly immoral, as part of a religion that is built on hate and with a heinous past no tyranny can match. Any "way" to rationalise good has got to be better, to defend the worse "way" just because it can be a "way" strikes me as a tad irrational.

You "lose" nothing, no good is unique to any faith, it can be achieved better more honestly and with fewer problems with a secular philosophy. Yes there are positive teaching that will be abandoned but so what? You don't keep a car that doesn't run just because the wipers still work, you get a car that does everything a car is supposed to, otherwise you might as well walk. There’s positive in many ideas most people will never encounter, and better ones in virtually all other philosophies that many are prevented from knowing. Xtianity’s are derivative and so tainted by doctrine and lies, you’d really have to be desperate to insist it should be preserved just for the sliver of decency that remains. We will not miss it when religion is gone, our sentiment holds us back but morally there is no good argument for its continuation. Nice try though.

And chef, I’d love to dissect all your posts but I lack the time for now, I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree, as you seem very hung up on introspective emotionalism. Still it is interesting and I hope to continue later.

Ficino

Northensun

ME

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AUB, I've been reading most of your posts since I came onto this site in late summer.

Thanks, I am well aware that I need to shorten the length of my writings, but I have a lot to say, and prefer to thoroughly dissect when I regard my opponent's position as completely wrong.

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I've always been scared off from Ayn Rand. Are you an objectivist in her tradition?

Sort of, I am not as into economic issues, and base my morality on altuistic concerns rather than an egoist basis. My overall position is eclectic, but it includes humanism, scepticism, naturalism, rationalism, empiricism and other positions that I generally agree with. For me Objectivism is an extension of empiricism, but I also recognise the supremacy of reason, as I have personally experienced its power.

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On the other hand, I think there is much in Aristotle, Epicurus

I regard Epicurus as the first modern European, and the greatest pioneer of materialistic morality, to me ethics has to be based on strictly naturalistic terms, that does not mean a lack of emotion, but the recognition of empiricism as the most reliable means of truth, and thustly morality. As for Aristotle, he got some things right and some things wrong, due to the fact that he preferred rational introspection over empiricism, which led to his "scientific" work being eventually totally negated by modern science. Apart from this flaw his many other ideas were certainly very helpful, however due to his idealistic tendencies he became a tool for the xtian Church, which is why I prefer the strictly materialistic philosophers, but we have less of their work as most of it was destroyed by the Church.

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I am intrigued by your observation that ethics must pick up where the Greeks and their successors left the discussion, so as to repair it from the damage done by Christianity.

Ethics began with our instincts becoming emotional motivations, (Chef will like that) and then reached a higher intellectual level, more suited to our mental development when the greatest thinkers of Greece established better foundations for morality other than simply instinctive altruism or empathy. They saw morality as purely a human standards designed to protect our species, which is of course what it is. It was not a matter of a deity's will, or any universal or pre-human standard. It was practical and it worked, I can name many examples of great and ethical people who were vastly superior to the greatest xtian moralists. The Church has of course blotted out of the memory of these great people, and in the case of Pliny the younger, out right libeled him, turning a second generation ethical philosopher into a Torquemada style monster.

What the Epicureans, cynics and stoics achieved was not to be matched for over a 1000 years. When the Church took over, morality was a secondary function of divine authoritarianism, and the story of western ethical values came to an end. As far as I am concerned nothing from 400 AD to 1400 that anyone wrote or did is worth a damn on ethical issues, other than as an example of what not to do. There are no saints, no martyrs, no kings and no peasants whose actions were guided by any decent ethical system, as even when their actions were good they were always for strictly non-ethical motivations.

QUOTE

I'm also intrigued by your observation that the ease with which ex-theists fall into relativism, as though that's the only other option, can be explained in part by the lies Christianity gave them: viz. that God is the ground of ethics.

This is something I noticed the moment I got here, here's a summery of a debate I had a year or so ago,

http://www.humanism.me.uk/essays/Ex%20Xtians.htm

(You may remember it.)

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I love your statement that this crisis is a symptom of the death of Christianity.

It is a little parting give they left us, inevitable when you base morals on a belief that can easily removed by anything from common sense to a lifetime of scientific study. Some might say at least we were better off with religious ethics, I think that is short-sighted and ignorant. When morality was based on the Big Lie it was not only a false ethic due to its degenerate origins of bronze age cultural taboos and personal opinions of long dead zealots, but subject to the divine command flaw, biblical inconsistency, and to a certainty which created more harm than good.

Now that we have this secular uncertainty, it appears to leave us worse off, but that's because we still have this idea that certainty is always a good thing. We need to be sceptical, we need to debate, we need to work ethics out like the Greeks of old, because that is the only way to reach a decent moral standard, as well as find the truth. Some may be tempted to run scared (or lazily) back into the fold, others with maturity and bravery must face the future by creating ourselves, the Greeks were not afraid to do this, and neither should we be. Religious ethics is an oxymoron, for the word to have meaning it has to be responsible and rational, but first we must unlearn all that xianity taught us.

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Like you, I think, Ratzinger opposes those who call the notion of truth itself into question.

I find these people very irritating, however "a" "truth" does not do unless it is the actual truth. Others may be willing to settle for a Lie, just to have a comfortable certainty, I cannot do that.

QUOTE

If you're still with me, I wonder what you and Chefranden think of the view of Bryan Magee, which he traces to Hume, that morality rests on right sentiment. That way of thinking sounds consistent with that of the brain research, social biology crowd.

ficino

Dear AUB, no time to say much now, but thanks for your reflective reply, which merits a second reading from me. Maybe there will be topics we should take to a new thread.

One such, perhaps, is a question that strikes me upon reading the end of your post, when you talk about morality/ethics beginning in emotion and then in later philosophers becoming grounded in true judgments, or something like that. I then think of the question, how much emotions themselves, though not reducible to cognitive states, still have cognitive content. The Stoics did a lot of work on this question. Chrysippus and others considered how much an emotion rests on beliefs. If I'm angry at you, usually I believe you've treated me unjustly; if I realize that's not the case (say, you did something by accident), usually my anger abates. And so on. I've put a lot of thought into the cognitive base of emotion in recent years, though nowhere at the point of articulating a position. (A good study: Peter Goldie's The Emotions. A Philosophical Exploration. Also various works by Martha Nussbaum.)

OK, enough on that for now. Cheers,

ME

QUOTE (Northernsun)

But there has to be some common set of moral principles that all humans can agree to build an ethical society on. [/QUOTE]

Exactly.

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You must already have some mental list of moral criteria that you use to compare various religious doctrines in order for you to make that statement that you find Buddhism to be the most moral.

Yes, and the problem will lie in that the criteria is tainted by mysticism, and would not pass a more thorough examination. Buddhism may be superior to xtian morality, (not that that means much) but it's still has "doctrines" such as reincarnation which have caused moral controversies such as certain Buddhist's attitudes towards the disabled. This is an un-objective standard, because it is based on a belief that is empirically false. And therefore unethical. All I am asking is for ethics to be based on pure objective facts, so as not to make these kinds of mistakes. Even the smallest error can corrupt the whole system, as evidenced by some of xtian's worst atrocities committed by the smallest biblical quote or doctrinal position.

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I agree with him, especially since the "use" of emotions is in no way excluded from this process:

Yes, because emotions have their place, they must not be the guide as they can be miss-informed, (they don't always "know" the truth, we arn't animals doing everything by instinct anymore, life isn't that simple) they must always bow to empirical reality, anything else is irresponsible and ignorant. I still cannot see why chef objects to this, other than is dislike of emotional detachment.

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But objective reasoning is just the method for developing the list.

Exactly, emotions are involved in many stages of the process, but as in science, facts needs to be objectively verified, before they can be used as the basis for ethics. Once the facts have been collected and confirmed, not even necessarily by ethicists, emotions may once more be allowed to roam, but we cannot use them at every stage, because they ultimately reflect our beliefs, and unless we are totally objective and logical, our beliefs will be error ridden.

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This does not mean you have to buy in to all the conclusions of Ayn Rand's Objective Philosophy.

I am certainly not convinced by all of it.

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Its AUB's turn also to provide his list of moral principles

That would take an essay of epic proportions, as I would need to defend each position. At this point I do not regard it as necessary, I do not wish to dictate like some Moses, but encourage people to base their morals on a better foundation. I will accept other people's standards as long as they are empiricical, as there won't be ground for disagreement, providing that the reasoning and facts are not biased or corrupted. In a sense this is like science, whatever the facts happen to be, they must dictate the hypothesis or theory, as long as empiricism remains absolute, I have no problem with any hypothesis or theory. I do not feel the need to promote or defend any scientific models or concepts, but merely to defend the scientific method, as that is the best way to get to the truth. So in objective morality, I need to defend the method, and help others to understand why it alone can be trusted, before I start telling people how to live their lives. They would resent this and choose to disbelieve me if they did not recognise the supremacy of empiricism. In other words, one thing at a time. Objective ethics are best demonstrated by offering the solution to a suggested scenario, not really "listing", they're a way of dealing with all the infinite possibilities, not trying to fit all possibilities into a narrow set of rules. The virtue of this method should prove self evident, in itself, without any list, as the arguments for any alternative are weaker.

Besides I have demonstrated my ethical values on numerous occasions here, they are nothing special and are pretty much what you'd expect from a humanist. Also objective morality again like science is a method to be applied, not a "path" or set of moral rules, but rules for morals, as such we have "laws" like scientific ones, they are desriptive not prescriptive. We invented the "laws" of physics to describe objective phenomina, and objective morality is what you have when descriptions of objective humanity are used to reason the subsequent ethics.

We invent ethics, but in response to reality, the term "objective" is used to denote this relationship. We may have decided to create ethics from pure reasoning of practical human concerns or emotional drives, that is not important, as long as you go about it in the right way. Also you can't really codify morals, because they would then cease to be responsive to circumstances, http://www.humanism.me.uk/essays/Evolution...ality%202.0.htm and circumstance dictates results. Morality derives from what the result of our actions will be, in other words all morals originate from the empirical observation of the results of our actions, all, even those claiming to be the product of a deity. The horror of moral absolutism, is that it dictates things, ideas actions are intrinsically bad or good in themselves regardless of circumstances or effect, as demonstrated by Jason Gastich's inablility to admit that lying can be moral if it saves lives. Such "written on stone tablets" laws, the kind you can list are never very helpfull. Instead you have principles, flexable and responsible, not blind and un-caring, like Judeo-Christian moral authoritarianism, the greatest evil of all time, that makes people do self-evidently wrong things in the name of right simply because it claims to right, not because it can be demonstrated to be so.

I will give you some references, but all in empiracism is tentative and subject to change, and therefore so are objective morals, but these should give you a rough understanding of the values I hold. This may look like I'm dodging, but this is about the origin and definition of what morality is, and how it is best applied, not what the resulting morals actually are, which is not actually that relevant here. We (chef and me) may well have very similar principles, generally describable as "liberal", tolerance, progressive etc. But derived from a very different philosophical discipline, this is about which discipline is correct, as it is possible to reach the same conclusion as a moral objectivist's, by a less correct method, simply because the results we get you are pretty easy to reach with a bit of commonsense. The only real enemy is the psudo-ethical nonsense of religious rules.

http://www.atheistsforhumanrights.org/index.htm#f1

http://www.secularhumanism.org/intro/declaration.html

http://www.humanism.org.uk/site/cms/conten...asp?chapter=309

http://www.atheistalliance.org/library/morals.html

http://www.atheistalliance.org/library/morality_god.html

http://andrew_redux.blogs.com/redux/2004/0...roblem_of_.html (this one seems to contradict me, but only does so for a definition of objective morality I am not defending, and agrees with my basis)

http://members.aol.com/okhutor/essay/part1.html

I will provide more later, I also need to deal with all of chef's posts 1st.

Also of course, unlike divine commandments I do not need to lay it out, as anyone using empirical reasoning will come to the same conclusions. It may not be what you are looking for but we tend not to "list" them, but apply them when the need arises. I am not, as chef seems to think prescribing a objective tyranny, but asking people to back up their moral positions with some facts. It's a process of elimination, and I feel that discrediting religious morality is a significant step forward.http://www.atheistalliance.org/library/brown-religion_source.html After them, then other less reliable standards, and eventually reach the solution.

QUOTE (FT)

Ultimately I will contend that without religion, there is "one right way" to develop a society.

There are a infinite number of ways to develop a society, all the cultures of the world are alternative approaches to the problem. All have achieved something, all have elements we need to consider. I regard Utopia as what may be reached if you combine all the successful and virtuous elements of all the civilisations that have ever existed, the trick is recognising those points that should be included. There is no right or wrong with a society, merely a moral standard all should obey.

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It must be some form of democracy that uses a free market economy.

Democracy yes, (the "meaning" of life dictates that) as for economics, (the subject in general is of no interest to me) I would rather we had a system where all are provided for in every necessity, housing, food, transportation, medical care, and all education. What we want beyond that would provide the impetus for work, but those content with a more spartan existence would be happy to simply do what may wish, poetry, pavement art whatever, for the rest of their lives, getting no money, either due to no interest in it or because (as in my case) payment for it is unlikely. No one stuck doing a job they hate in order to survive, But that is just me, I've funny opinions regarding economics.

QUOTE (ficino)

And so on. I've put a lot of thought into the cognitive base of emotion in recent years, though nowhere at the point of articulating a position.

The emotional basis for morality is the instinctive principles of empathy and altruism, the issue of emotional reactions being wrong when corrected by facts is the main course of my disagreement with chef.

Chef, I'll deal with your latest post first, please try not to respond with a lengthy post, as I'll never get round your earlier ones.

QUOTE (chef)

I can guarantee you that we do not see eye to eye on all moral issues.

Has neither of you are of objective moralists that just further proves my point.

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If one couple cannot agree to a common set of morals, how will 6 billion mostly strangers to each other manage it? I may be misunderstanding, but the very notion sounds utopian to me.

Utopia is the ultimate goal of every civilisations of some get closer to it for others, these tend to be the most rational ones. If all human beings can be rational and objective, then all human beings will agree on morality, this is not Utopia, it is the same phenomenon we find in science, where agreement is reached by a eventual accumulation of enough data to constitute an objective "fact", which no scientist would disagree with. Such as with Evolution, which is only disagreed with by religious nuts, claimed to be scientists, all the while working to undermine it. Within the confines of the scientific community however, all are one on this matter. If we can expand such a unified respect for empiricism to include all of humanity, then all would agree on Evolution. If morality can be empirically demonstrated, then such an expansion of acknowledgement would result in a universal morality. Simple really.

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Will the new objective morality be so self evidently correct that every last person will just give themselves a dope slap and say, "well of course"?

Yes, when free of irrational bias. They will at least be able to come to the same conclusion as everyone else. If there is a chance that all can acknowledge the same scientific facts, (with enough education and the removal of psudo science and religious misinformation) then if morality can be made a science, that chance exists for morality.

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Or will it take a new reign of terror to get folks to comply?

Now you are just being paranoid, scientists don't go around forcing people to accept their theories, so why should objective moralists? I don't see fans of Ayn Rand going around overthrowing governments somehow. It this paranoia just fear of some sort of religious style absolutism, (like those x-xtians in my previous debate) or has MG been filling you full of his kind of paranoia? I've seen him say the most ridiculously alarmist things concerning Humanists and atheists, similar to be all the "atheists are Communists" crap that fundys spew at us. I even had to stop a debate with him as he disgusted me so much, despite pleas for me to continue.

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I’m going to say that given human sensibilities, this new philosopher stone of turning people into agreeing moral agents is as objectively impossible as the one that was supposed to change lead into gold.

If you condemn the endeavour to fail for no other reason than it seems too good to be true, then you go from constructive criticism to defeatism. We have a mountain to climb, but no more formidable than ending religion itself.

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And I’m going so far as to say that to the extent objectivism excludes, or fails to take into account subjective human experience it has no chance at all of finding a meaningful list of any kind, let alone the "one right way".

It does not fail to take into account subjective human experience, it merely prevents them from dictating the truth, ensures that we acknowledge them to be subjective, and places them in the proper context, as being part of the human condition, but not a epistemological standard. A part of our knowledge regarding humanity. Very few of us ever acknowledge objective facts for what they really are, and those who do still have very few compared to our subjective opinions, but so long as we can tell the difference, truth can be ascertained. Most of what we experience in our lives is subjective, many of these things are an important part of whom we are as individuals, however morality deals with more than just the individual, I deals with humanity as a whole, and thusly has to be objective. It would be incomplete if it did not take into account all the variables such as subjective beliefs and experiences. It does not attempt to say you're subjective experiences are in no way relevant, but it does attempt to correct people when they claim their subjective experiences are some way of objective, Their limited understanding and experience are insufficient for an all-encompassing moral value system, based on the highest standards of evidence.

QUOTE

Above AUB writes, " The reverse of subjective lies is objective truth, what other basis for anything can there be?" I took that to mean human sensibility is opposed to truth, or at least will not produce truth.

There is the subjective and the objective, we need to be able to tell the difference, and base truth on the objective. That is what I mean, sometimes our feelings and emotions can actually reflect empirical reality, but we cannot tell just by the emotions whether this is so, but by analysing the objective facts dispassionately, then putting next to the emotions to see if they correlate. If you attempt to verify the objectivity of your emotions via your emotions or just with them, rather than removing them so as to conduct a objective study you will bias in the results. The need to be aware of the dangers of emotion, their relative nature and their insufficient standing as a basis for any objective truth. There are truths to the individual and truths to reality, you can't use the individual truths method to verify the objective truths. This is what Theists do when using their feelings to confirm that Jesus exists and loves them, this does not help, and create a moral system that we both acknowledge are wrong.

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I will also go so far as to say, that the "use" of emotions will be the judge of any list objective or otherwise.

Not necessarily, if we list a criteria or effect that are either required or not required in order to correlate with the prior arrived at definition of moral, then it can be done quite dispassionately. Besides as I said I don't really think a "list" would help.

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When AUB manages to write his list, I suggest that he will know it is "right" by the way he feels about it.

Even if I did, the emotions would be based on the empirical knowledge, they would be a complimentary to the facts, allowed to roam free after the objectivity process has been completed. I have already stated there is a time and place for emotions, I can feel as emotional as I like once the objective method is over. Besides these feelings would not assist me when determining the best course for individual scenario is, I would have to reason, I would also have to have the best facts available. Both to determine the course of action, and in order to determine what the results were. Also these feelings would not dictate what was right for wrong, just because they may make me think so, as their chances of being incorrect are far greater than a dispassionate inquiry. "Is" is not "ought".

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I also expect that he will be pissed when I disagree because I don’t feel it is right.

You may well use your emotions to determine your opinion, and that would annoy me if I had not relied on emotions to come to my conclusions. I would conclude that sentiment was clouding your judgment, like it does with Theists so often.

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I suspect that he will passionately try to get me to see how wonderfully objective the list is, or dismiss me as being subject to emotionalism.

I would not need to do so passionately, but merely outline my reasoning, point out that you fail to poke holes in them, and justly claim your inability to defeat reason with emotion.

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However, from below it would seem that AUB is not that opposed to experientialism, so I could be wrong in guessing his reaction.

I have nothing really against experientialism, it is not the usual type of philosophy I argue against, so I am unclear on how to proceed. It just seems that you put too much emphasis on subjectivism as a basis of truth, when an objective and therefore reality based standard would seem to make more sense. Its may all be down to a simple misunderstanding. Also I have less inclination to endlessly debate a non xtian. It is not quite as productive as destroying a Theist's arguments.

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And I contend that your "one right way" will not be exactly the same as even one other person, let alone more than remotely the same as the other 6 billion.

Has has been previously stated, reason, empiricism and logic are uniters, they are not dividers, people can independently come to the same conclusion using the same method. Using the method of objective ethics all people will independently come to the same moral conclusion, if it works for logic, if it works for empiricism then it should works for morality if defined by the same objective principles.

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If your "one right way" is to hold sway you will have force billions to comply, which will require oppression, or in other words the same mess as now only with different hierarchs.

Again you're making the error of assuming force is necessary, you're forgetting that this is objective, it may not be, but if it is then all such results as you describe, never derive from objective truths, oppression results from beliefs based on nothing, they are over compensation. They are the kind of things that subjective religious or ideological ideas need to do, to spread out like cancer and create uniformity through oppression. Assuming objective morality is subjective will of course allow you to assume this needs to happen for it to be universally recognised. If it is objective, then this will not need to happen. Assuming it will be tyrannical by disbelieving its principal feature and concluding it is the opposite is using one assertion to back up another.

I hope to deal with the rest of your posts when I've had some sleep. As to the list, I just think morality has to be based on objectivity, period. If I cannot defend that part then the rest is pointless.

Chef, I was going to reply to your post but I see that AUB has already responded. I would only add the following:

At times people will say or write something like: "Don’t impose your moral beliefs on me". This must be interpreted as implying a rejection of a select set of morals, not all my morals, as if we had nothing in common. If this person was sitting in the park, eating a snack, and reading a book; and I approached that person with my moral beliefs which included "do not murder people", the sitting person is very much likely to say: "By all means, do impose (follow) your moral belief and don’t kill me." In a similar manner that person might say "Follow your morals and don’t steal my book" or "Allow me to enjoy my book in privacy, which you also value."

I submit that humans across the globe are not so different that they cannot recognize a commonly held set of values which then allows for construction of a rational ethical system which everyone can live under, as long as it is not formulated using religious or mystical dogma. This results in a broad outline for a "one right way" system of morals governing human interaction, but it still retains plenty of latitude for individual and cultural distinction.

If past and current civilizations’ moral and governing systems have been built on religious doctrine which we are now declaring to be invalid, there has to be some replacement system. AUB is saying (I think) that the methods of Objectivist Ethics lead to this system, and I agree. My extension is that this will lead to democracies which use some form of free market economic system, but I repeat myself.

AUB, Thank you for the humanism references. I was beginning to think you were only interested in tearing apart religion, without providing any replacement. I have not read all your previous posts either, so I may have missed this.

(he’s got a point, I so take my rational lifestyle for granted I forget to point out how much better it is when ripping religion a new one. What followed was a long series of posts from several others, that I may respond to later, then Chef addressed me agian.)

Chefranden

Aub, I'm glad you have slowed down a bit. It is hard to keep up with that wizard mind of yours. I've taken the liberty to add a word (red) to your post as it seems to be missing.

I'm a bit confused as to how morals have an emotional base and then loose that base when reason shows up. The reason I'm confused is that morals are so obviously still attached to emotion. From what I've read about the brain the older emotional part is still activated before the prefrontal cortex when one encounters a "situation". That is we react before we analyze. That would seem to suggest that emotion still comes first.

Certainly reason analyzes the reaction to see if it was appropriate, but even then it does not do so dispassionately. I have just read Joao Magueijo's Faster than the Speed of Light. I was struck by how much emotion went into his discovery of variable speed light theory. I don't know if the theory will prove to be correct, but it was brought to us at least in part by emotion.

My question is how do you turn off your obvious passion to dispassionately explore the facts and then turn it back on again to react to the truth?
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This is not quite correct. I don't trust emotion as opposed to reason. I'm just saying, that it is impossible to turn of human sensibility and be left with just reason to arrive at some universal moral absolute. Even if such a thing existed it would still have to be understood relative to billions of individual unique subjects in the same way to get the same behavior. Somehow that just doesn't seem reasonable to me.

Spamandham, damn I’d forgotten what this thread was about to start with.
QUOTE I've debated with myself about strong atheism, and have concluded that the question "god exists" can not be asserted or refuted simply because it is a meaningless statement.
That position is known as noncognativism, and is correct as far as it goes; however it still leaves room for strong atheism, as follows.

1. A meaningless word can arguably signify the logical non-existence of the concept it tries to convey.

2. The concept or being meant by those who use the term can, when sufficiently defined outside the term, can still be logicaly and empirically disproven.

3. Strong atheism is usually a disbelief in a specific deity, the god of the bible, such a being is defined within those pages, and such characteristics can be subjected to analysis for logical consistency, and the deeds subject to empiricism. The more specific the deity the more specific the means used to debunk it.

QUOTE

To assert "god does not exist" presupposes that the term "god" is coherently defined and that the property of "existence" can coherently be applied to it. Neither of these are the case.

The vaguer and more abstract the definition or understanding of the term of "god" i.e. deism, pantheism or a "creator" the more abstract the methods used to rule it out, logic etc. When we say, "god does not exist," we mean whichever comprehension of the term accepted by the specific group of believers we are dealing with. We know the term is meaningless, but not to those who believe, and we need to go deeper into debunking the concept, impossible to do if the debate is stopped short by us refusing to recognise the validity of the term. It is the subjective view of the term we debunk, not the objective meaninglessness of it. We sometimes say " god has not been defined" they then go on about Jesus, all loving, died for our sins, destroyed Sodom and Gamora, etc. and we just refute all those characteristics. We take out the details, not the term "god" itself, as noncognativism has already done that, we are just being thorough.

Chef, I'm too busy to continue for now but I think we can leave it with this... There is instinctive morality (emotional) and rational morality (Epicurean etc) I prefer one, you prefer the other, I way have issues with your brand of ethics as I am weary of emotional judgement but it is certainly better than absolute of religious morality, and maybe I can best defend empirical ethics later, but for now we'll leave it there.(Hopefully I can respond to the remaining point soon)

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