Absolute Morality

Originally posted by dj2becker
If there is no transcendent God, there can be no such thing as true and absolute right.

I think we are agreed on that one.

If there is no God, we cannot condemn people for dedicating their lives to their own pleasures and we cannot demand that they place society above themselves.
We can condemn and demand all we want. Whose going to stop us?

We have no standard by which to prove that doing good to others is any better than ignoring the needs of others and doing good for oneself.
True.

In a world without God to underscore absolutes, we cannot expect anyone to live up to any standard society chooses to set up.
We can have any expectations we choose.

If there is no God, all rules are mere opinion and none have authority.
True.

If there is no God to give mankind hope for life after death, you may as well ignore any notions of righteousness that self-appointed moralists shove at you and get on with the business of doing only what you want to do.
Yes. However I don't see how the existence of God and life after death would reverse that claim. How is God threatening you with punishment different from a policeman doing the same? You are basically claiming that man is necessarily selfish in nature.

Originally posted by ckoh1965
[b]I am just waiting for a response from you. So tell me, do you feel that it is amoral of God to take someone's life? And if so, by whose moral standard?

Do you want to hear a funny story? Well, never mind, I'm gonna tell you anyway! Y'know, when I was young my dad caught me smoking when I was about 14 years old. Oh you should have seen how my dad b ...[text shortened]... God to go against His own standard when he drowned everyone-- including unborn infants.[/b]

But of course it's OK for God to go against His own standard when he drowned everyone-- including unborn infants.

So you are also saying that it is amoral of God to take a life? Is is wrong for the giver of life to take the life that he has given?

By saying it is wrong for God to do something, you are assuming that there is such a thing as right and wrong , and thus good and evil. And by assuming there is such a thing as good and evil, you assume there is a moral law by which to differentiate between good and evil, and by assuming a moral law, there must be a moral lawgiver, and if there is a moral lawgiver it is God, so actually by assuming there is such a thing as absolute right and wrong, you are actually admitting the existence of God.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I think we are agreed on that one.

If there is no God, we cannot condemn people for dedicating their lives to their own pleasures and we cannot demand that they place society above themselves.
We can condemn and demand all we want. Whose going to stop us?

We have no standard by which to prove that doing good to others is any better than i policeman doing the same? You are basically claiming that man is necessarily selfish in nature.

Whether God exists or not is not merely a theoretical abstraction that has no practical bearing on our everyday lives. When a belief in God wanes and dies, society loses its stable underpinning and spins downward into a maelstrom of fragmented individualism with each person out for his or her own gain and each of is the potential victims of all the others.

Originally posted by twhitehead
My reality doesn't contain circles or squares, they are construct in an imaginary logical world.
You are mixing up logical truth and reality.

You're losin' me here, are you simply refusing to recognise that circles and squares exist in "reality?" Or just that you insist on your own reality in which they don't exist?

Break it down for me .. what is the distinction between logical truth and reality, and how "in reality" logical truth doesn't exist?

Originally posted by Starrman
1) It does not logically follow from a discussion about morals that there is no absolute truth.
2) It does not logically follow from a lack of absolute truth that absolute certainty is not possible. Truth and knowlegde of truth are not equivalent.
3) As we've been over many times in the past, even though your reasoning above is faulty, I do not have 100 ...[text shortened]... and I don't know a human being that could do that.

You're the one with the flimsy soapbox.

Without God as the source for morality, any rational explanation for morality collapses. As prominent ethicist Richard Taylor says, "The modern age, more or less repudiating the ideas of a divine lawgiver, has nevertheless tried to retain the ideas of moral right and wrong, not noticing that in casting God aside, they have abolished the conditions of meaningfulness for moral right and wrong as well. Thus, even educated persons declare that such things as war, or the violation of certain human rights are 'morally wrong', and they imagine that they have said something true and significant. Educated people do not need to be told, however, that such questions such as these have never been answered outside of religion."

Without God as the source and base of morality, we cannot find an explanation for it that is consistent with reality.

Originally posted by jammer
"Regardless of that nonsense, I originally said there was no absolute truth." ... to which I said, "You cannot argue against absolute truth unless an absolute truth is the basis of your argument."

Then you attempt to backstep by saying " I did not say 'there is absolutely no absolute truth' (basicly, yes, you did) neither did I say 'there is absolutely no ...[text shortened]... lutely no square circles and there are absolutely no round squares.
Absolute truth.

Absolute truth as a concept can be argued against by saying 'there is no absolute truth', and giving just one example of a truth which is realtive; simple really. Now, that statement is not an absolute one, it is merely an acknowledgement about a state of the world from any point of view, in my case, a relative and common sense view of existsence. To state 'there is absolutely no absolute truth' is indeed an absolute statement and creates a paradox. To state 'there is absolutely no truth' is also a paradox.

I'm not sure what you mean by an 'inflexible reality', I perscribe to a holistic view of experience/existence similar to that of Quine, in which there really are no unalterable facts (the question of analyticity not withstanding in this debate).

Originally posted by dj2becker
Without God as the source for morality, any rational explanation for morality collapses. As prominent ethicist Richard Taylor says, "The modern age, more or less repudiating the ideas of a divine lawgiver, has nevertheless tried to retain the ideas of moral right and wrong, not noticing that in casting God aside, they have abolished the conditions of meani ...[text shortened]... and base of morality, we cannot find an explanation for it that is consistent with reality.

I've never heard of Richard Taylor, perhaps you'd provide a link. Either way, he's just plain wrong, those questions have been answered time and time again, and not just on this site. That you and he (whomever he may be) refuse to accept that is due only to the incompatibilty of those answers with your twisted view of existence and god.

Originally posted by Starrman
Absolute truth as a concept can be argued against by saying 'there is no absolute truth', and giving just one example of a truth which is realtive; simple really. Now, that statement is not an absolute one, it is merely an acknowledgement about a state of the world from any point of view, in my case, a relative and common sense view of existsence.

Saying "there is no absolute truth" is an absolute statement. You are claiming this is absolutely true .. a contradiction of yourself.

Your statement is indeed an absolute statement.

I gave you an example of an absolute truth .. squares, circles. You said that in "your reality" square circles are possible .. you didn't explain it, you just claimed it as true.


You say ..
"Now, that statement is not an absolute one, it is merely an acknowledgement about a state of the world from any point of view, in my case, a relative and common sense view of existsence."

That's doublespeak if i've ever heard it.

"Truth is relative" is another assertion you make (I think), this is another absolute statement .. it implies truth is absolutely relative.
If it's true that "truth is relative", then everything, including that statement would be relative. If a statement is relative it's not always true. If "truth is relative" is not always true, sometimes truth is not relative.
This means there are absolute truths, which means your staement is false.
Relativist arguments always contradict themselves.

Originally posted by dj2becker
So you are also saying that it is amoral of God to take a life? Is is wrong for the giver of life to take the life that he has given?

By my moral standards yes, it is wrong. To take back a gift without permission from the owner is wrong. (or is the 'gift' of life only a loan?)

By saying it is wrong for God to do something, you are assuming that there is such a thing as right and wrong , and thus good and evil.
But not if we say it is 'morally wrong' for God to do something.

And by assuming there is such a thing as good and evil, you assume there is a moral law by which to differentiate between good and evil, and by assuming a moral law, there must be a moral lawgiver
Now you are just making things up.

and if there is a moral lawgiver it is God,
how so?

so actually by assuming there is such a thing as absolute right and wrong, you are actually admitting the existence of God.
Even if I did think there was such a thing as absolute right and wrong, your (which I don't) it would in no way imply the existence of God.

Originally posted by dj2becker
Whether God exists or not is not merely a theoretical abstraction that has no practical bearing on our everyday lives. When a belief in God wanes and dies, society loses its stable underpinning and spins downward into a maelstrom of fragmented individualism with each person out for his or her own gain and each of is the potential victims of all the others.

So you believe that everyone in the world either believes in God or is a selfish individualist? Do you have evidence for this? I know plenty of selfish individualist Christians.

Originally posted by Starrman
I've never heard of Richard Taylor, perhaps you'd provide a link. Either way, he's just plain wrong, those questions have been answered time and time again, and not just on this site. That you and he (whomever he may be) refuse to accept that is due only to the incompatibilty of those answers with your twisted view of existence and god.

I've never heard of Richard Taylor, perhaps you'd provide a link.

Richard Taylor, Ethics, Faith and Reason (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.😛rentice-Hall, 1985), 2-3.

Either way, he's just plain wrong,

As a relativist, you should know that 'wrong' is meaningless..

Originally posted by dj2becker
Without God as the source for morality, any rational explanation for morality collapses.

Because you and Richard Taylor say so? God as a source is hardly a 'rational explanation' whereas saying that morality is a direct result of evolution is.

Without God as the source and base of morality, we cannot find an explanation for it that is consistent with reality.
And how is an imaginary being like God consistent with reality? Again you are assuming that morality is absolute and somehow concluding that that implies God - which it doesn't.

Originally posted by jammer
Saying "there is no absolute truth" is an absolute statement. You are claiming this is absolutely true .. a contradiction of yourself.

Your statement is indeed an absolute statement.

I gave you an example of an absolute truth .. squares, circles. You said that in "your reality" square circles are possible .. you didn't explain it, you just claimed it a ...[text shortened]... ans your staement is false.
Relativist arguments always contradict themselves.

No, no no. I am not claiming that there is no absolute truth absolutely, I am claiming that there is no 'absolute truth'. These are different things, why can't you see that? Absolute truth is a concept dj2becker presents and I refute, I do not make this claim absolutely. Please try and understand what is really being said here.

As to the second point regarding square circles, I said no such thing. If you re-read my post you'll see that I left out the nature of analyticity which would be a necessary part of any discussion of square circles inside my relativistic view. If you're after a discussion about the nature of necessity and analyticity, I frankly don't have the time for that and I'm not about to bang my head against a wall trying to get it into yours.

The third paragraph (point?) says nothing of the sort, any phatic utterence is not necessarily absolute. You need to sort out an epistemological flaw in your thinking. By the end of that paragraph you've ceased to make any sense. I wish bbarr was here, he'd explain it more comprehensively.

I'm tired of going round in cirlces with you two, if you can't see that your objections and arguments are invalid and often inconsistent, I'm not going to keep getting frustrated at explaining it to you. Have fun.

Originally posted by dj2becker
[b]I've never heard of Richard Taylor, perhaps you'd provide a link.

Richard Taylor, Ethics, Faith and Reason (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.😛rentice-Hall, 1985), 2-3.

Either way, he's just plain wrong,

As a relativist, you should know that 'wrong' is meaningless..[/b]

So all his ethical work is presupposed by a claim to moral absoluteness via god, how unsurprising. Cite a secular ethicist who supports his view that this question has not been answered.

Now you're just being a fool, 'wrong' functions just fine as a relative term.

Originally posted by jammer
You're losin' me here, are you simply refusing to recognise that circles and squares exist in "reality?" Or just that you insist on your own reality in which they don't exist?

Break it down for me .. what is the distinction between logical truth and reality, and how "in reality" logical truth doesn't exist?

A circle does not exist in reality. It is a logical construct.

Now, is a single point a circle, a square or neither? If a circle is infinitely small, can it be distinguished from a square?