Church-Burning Video Used to Promote Atheist Event

_{Gil Dodgen

January 27, 2012

Atheism}

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Here’s another delightful offering from the compassionate, tolerant, inclusive, diversity-promoting atheist community. As usual, it includes a plug for “evolution.”

…the lineup includes atheist speakers, a rapper who raps about evolution and a “kiddy pool” where boys and girls will be able to scientifically walk on water.

There will also be a number of bands performing – the most famous of which is Aiden. They are featured in a video on the “Rocky Beyond Belief” website that includes images of burning churches and bloody crosses.

Among the lyrics: “Love how the [sic] burn your synagogues, love how they torch your holy books.

The group is no stranger to strong lyrics. Another of their songs says, “F*** your God, F*** your faith in the end. There’s no religion.

From a link in the link above:

The band Aiden has announced it will be playing the atheist festival “Rock Beyond Belief” at Fort Bragg in March 2012, as the lead-in act to Richard Dawkins, the main attraction at the “concert.”

As we all know, Christian believers are mysteriously the primary targets of denigration and vilification on the part of militant atheists (always, of course, in the name of the high virtues they proclaim: tolerance, diversity, etc. — yawn).

I have a modest proposal for the band Aiden:

Why not be a little more specific in your lyrics and see what happens? How about:

“F*** Jesus, F*** the Bible, F*** Christians”
“F*** Mohammed, F*** the Koran, F*** Muslims”

The results of this experiment would be interesting to observe.

Comments

champignon:
I suppose it’s appropriate that you’re baffled by a nested hierarchy.
LoL! YOU don't even know what a nested hierarchy is.Joe_{February 6, 2012
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Ch: Has it ever struck you that people have another life and may easily miss sub threads (especially if they are not tracking the recent posts list)? KFkairosfocus_{February 6, 2012
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Meant: pace Joe. An html editor would be nice :)Elizabeth Liddle_{February 6, 2012
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Yes, I agree. Nested forums only really work if post titles only are displayed (as in scoop sites). But yeah, it's a good example of how posts do not lend themselves to nested hierarchies :) pace not everything does ;)Elizabeth Liddle_{February 6, 2012
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Regarding the nominal topic of this thread: the headline concerns "church-burning" which you alleged Aiden was promoting. It turned out they were condemning it, in a song called "hysteria" which warns against the kind of ideologies that lead to burning churches. You refuse to retract, merely changing your complaint. Re the rest of your post: Please read my response to you, and, if you want to continue the conversation, address the points I have made. In particular, please explain, without slogans, what you mean by "the inherent IS-OUGHT gap of evolutionary materialism". I don't know what you mean by the words in that phrase, and they seem important to your point. But I can't parse it. I have shown you, repeatedly, how it is possible to derive both morality and ethics without positing a creator God, and how a theistic position does not absolve one from the responsibility of resolving ethical dilemmas, nor provide the answers. We have to use our reason. Others have also made this point, including Markf. Yet you have not so much as mentioned it, let alone addressed it, that I can see. There seems no point in attempting to continue a conversation with someone who seems only to respond with a dictionary of stock phrases, and does not appear to make even a minimal attempt to either explain these when questioned on them, or to understand the proferred counter-points. You seem blinded by anger, kf. Please calm down. LizzieElizabeth Liddle_{February 6, 2012
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I suppose it's appropriate that you're baffled by a nested hierarchy.champignon_{February 5, 2012
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NOTE: I am finding it very hard to keep track of the threaded pattern, which lends itself to multiple sub-discussions. I may have overlooked significant comments, Please understand, and let us hope we will soon have a chrono view option. Once a thread gets long, that option becomes much more valuable. KFkairosfocus_{February 5, 2012
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Dr Liddle: sorry, but not good enough. Above,repeatedly, you responded to my pointing to the inherent IS-OUGHT gap of evolutionary materialism, with an irrelevancy that is atmosphere-poisoning. That cannot be dismissed with a few words. Nor can the implications of such a view be brushed aside, as though the 100 million ghosts from the century past who underscore the force of warnings since Plato, can be forgotten. And as for Aiden, the actual nominal focus of this thread, I have had to again expose what they are doing, and how their enablers retaliate against whistle-blowers, here. Please do better than this. KFkairosfocus_{February 5, 2012
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KF, My earlier comment still applies:
KF, Suppose that the members of Aiden were the very spawn of Satan. A lie about them would still be a lie. Given your sanctimonious lectures on morality, how do you justify your lies? Is lying for Jesus okay in your book?
champignon_{February 5, 2012
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F/N: At some point or other Ch tries to twist away from HOW Aiden's propaganda works. So, let me note again -- and ironically, this very thread shows the same pattern of turnabout in perceived retaliation, though not at the level of physical violence (I note, of course that my family have been held hostage to threats by those of the same ilk, threats that are made mafioso style then when I pointed them out, there was a pretence they are just imagined on my part; so you can understand why I am not impressed by the deniability tactics . . . ) Let's do the deconstruction in outline again: 1 --> Aiden's technique starts with the context of their response to the gospel: smearing verbal filth across it as can be seen from the original post onwards. This alone is sufficient to expose the animating spirit for that band. 2 --> In the video in question, they begin by creating an invidious image of the Christian spokesman presented: a vampire clergyman, duly draped in the Christian cross and placed in a graveyard. (I have seen the claim that it is a graveyard for military members, which if true would underscore a context evident from the timing in the early 00's and some lyrics of what has been called -- by fellow atheists -- the atheist anthem.) 3 --> Then, we see images of burning houses of worship, and soon thereafter an image in sepia tone, of 60's era police arresting a black man, apparently at some protest or other. Against this montage or cascade of images, we hear about love the way they burn your synagogues and holy books. Remember, we are in an age of images being even more important than words in manipulation. 4 --> already, through image association and culturally available themes and myths, the imagined vampire clergy are cast as racist and hatefully violent, inciters of pogroms and racism. 5 --> This is the context where these are then accused by implication of having coffers filled with blood money, graveyards filled with victims of mongered wars, criminals protected, genocide promoted. Those hypocritical, theocratic, tyrannical, blood mongering fundies, we are going to smear you for what you are -- in our imaginations, of course. (Whistleblower retaliation tactics above are NOT coincidental: Gil and I are plastered as dishonest, hypocritical and RELIGIOUS. [and, BTW, while there is an attempt to manipulate moral sensibilities and perceptions, we can find nowhere the faintest trace of a grounding of OUGHT on the ISes accepted by evolutionary materialism, i.e. the above should be understood as might and manipulation make 'right' as there is nothing more than feelings and mass views defining cultural positions, so let us manipulate to create hostility to the vampire clergy and their hangers on.]) 6 --> Then, the immorally equivalent fundies joined at the hip and promoting evil God-based fantasies card is played: Christians, Jews, Muslims. The insinuation is, that the Christian vampire clergy and their hangers on are the same as Al Qaeda suicide bombers crashing planes full of hostages into buildings full of innocents. This is not overtly said of course, but that is the underlying high-context allusion, given that notorious theme that has been circulated far and wide. 7 --> This is one of the controlling contextual ideas that has to be understood and addressed. For instance, some weeks back, when I spoke in my personal blog against the Pushtun -- it is not even strictly Islamic -- custom of sending a child bride to another clan in payment for crimes by a member of one's clan that so often leads to horrific abuse, I was accused of being just the same, believing in the same God, being just as religious, etc. See the utterly warped and distorted prejudice and bigotry, that is ever so resistant to correction? 8 --> It must be understood that this terrorist fundies joined at he hip smear is firmly established in the minds of the audience Aiden is appealing to. That is why they are using the vampire clergy image, and it is why they speak of Christians, Jews and Muslims in the same breath. Do you see why AP in its press handbook, has warned that the term "Fundamentalist" has become so loaded with smears -- thanks in large part, BTW to media manipulation techniques -- that it should be avoided? (Cf some correctives here.) 9 --> But in fact IslamISTS of the ilk of Al Qaeda are not even representative of the majority of Muslims, much less being typical of Jews or Christians. 10 --> So, we must understand the rhetoric of wedges [real ones like this], which create an Orwellian doublespeak environment by poisoning images and words. Here, the Christian faith and anything symbolic of it are being further poisoned in the minds of Aiden's intended audience. 11 --> In that context, enter the ever-present lunatic fringe, who will see turnabout as "fair play." So on this level we simply look from target, the vampire clergy, fundies joined at the hip, to the reaction, burn baby burn, buildings and holy books. In short, at minimum, Aiden are enabling and subtly inciting, precisely by driving poisonous wedges and failing to give a true and fair view. (I have already had occasion to draw attention to the pattern of one-sided unbalanced caricaturing of the Christian church, its message and members in this thread. Of course this problem has been duly projected unto the scapegoat targets. For pointing out that evo mat as a worldview is amoral, in the sense that it has no grounding IS that objectively warrants OUGHT -- something that is not even controversial in informed circles, we have been falsely accused of saying that atheists are only and utterly evil. When in reply we have pointed to the difference between a system of thought and the reality of people made in God;s image and having the gift of conscience as foundational Christian understanding, so the issue is to expose and address a key absurdity of a system of thought and its deleterious influences, the false accusation has simply been reiterated as though it were established fact. For, the key rhetorical tactic in distraction from the significance of such a gap in a worldview is to use the power of polarisation, NOT to actually face and deal with serious issues on their merits. Which is exactly what Aiden is doing, and it is exactly the underlying tone in that sophomoric book, The God Delusion. Sadly, many have been so taken in that they often lionise what they should realise instead is a sign that something is very wrong with evolutionary materialism, if it has to resort to such ill founded arguments and invidious tactics. And, that can be backed up in detail, cf here and here for starters.) 12 --> And, even when torches are not physically used, incendiary rhetoric will be used to light metaphorical fires to burn baby burn, burn those clergy men, their churches and their books. (And, FYI, it is the apostle James who speaks of the tongue as a little fire that sets huge out of control conflagrations, and is in turn set on fire by hell.) 13 --> This immediately brings us full circle to the plastering of verbal filth across the gospel, to dismiss it. Fires of contempt and hate have been so stoked that Aiden is plainly confident that it can simply dismiss the gospel by smearing it with vulgarities, without being called to account. 14 --> And lo and behold, above in this thread the most we have seen from the evolutionary materialist side is some acknowledgement that rude words were used. 15 --> So, we see the agenda exposed for all to see. But, what is the response? Shoot at the messenger, distract from the issue, all the devils are on that side, and all the angels are on the side of Aiden. Ignore evidence that something is very twisted, incendiary and uncivil on the part of Aiden. And, never, never acknowledge that something may be wrong in promoting, celebrating or enabling such a group and its message. 16 --> As for the issue that such a group is not a proper warm-up act for Dawkins, come March at Ft Bragg, don't even think about that. 17 --> And as for actual evidence and argument that a theistic view may have some legitimacy, or that the gospel may have a sound historical foundation, dismiss that in a torrent of angry thoughts, and if you can get away with it, plaster verbal filth across it. Instantly revealing the underlying animating spirit, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Of course, I have no expectation that those trapped in angry, hostile, deeply ideologised evolutionary materialist rhetoric will in the first instance listen or respond reasonably. Such will act out of their programming, to retaliate using Alinsky's cynically destructive rules for radicals, not to reason. But, ever so many standing by can begin to see that Plato's point is all too evidently relevant. Let us wake up, our civilisation faces the progressive effects of a universal acid, destructive but beguiling evolutionary materialist ideologies robed in the holy lab coat. KFkairosfocus_{February 5, 2012
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F/N: Some relevant statistics that are being left off, of course, relate to the penetration of the radical relativism, dismissal of the counsels of scripture etc that have become all too common in churches immersed in the climate of our civilisation. In other words, Barna et al are giving a report card on worldliness in churches in our time, and thus the need for repentance, renewal and reformation. What is conspicuously absent from those who are latching on to such statistics on nominal Christianity coupled to a want of serious discipleship or even serious attempts at discipleship that struggle to overcome a widespread cultural influence sanctioned by leading voices and institutions that shape views and perceptions in profound ways, is the just as valid and longstanding pattern of life and community transformation by living relationship with God in the communion of the saints, across 2,000 years with millions of cases, down to today. In short, Dennet's observation that Darwin's thought taken as a worldview core becomes a "universal acid" that if left to its own course, "eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old landmarks still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways," has a serious point. But the point is not novel to Darwin or Dawkins et al, it goes all the way back to Plato, who (while being subtly skeptical about the pagan traditions of his own day) grimly warned us 2350 years ago in The Laws, Bk X. let us note the subtle balance he first strikes, speaking in the voice of the Athenian Stranger:
Ath. At Athens there are tales preserved in writing which the virtue of your state, as I am informed, refuses to admit. They speak of the Gods in prose as well as verse, and the oldest of them tell of the origin of the heavens and of the world, and not far from the beginning of their story they proceed to narrate the birth of the Gods, and how after they were born they behaved to one another. Whether these stories have in other ways a good or a bad influence, I should not like to be severe upon them, because they are ancient; but, looking at them with reference to the duties of children to their parents, I cannot praise them, or think that they are useful, or at all true. [[Notice Plato's own carefully stated skepticisms and moral concerns regarding classical paganism.] Of the words of the ancients I have nothing more to say; and I should wish to say of them only what is pleasing to the Gods. But as to our younger generation and their wisdom, I cannot let them off when they do mischief. For do but mark the effect of their words: when you and I argue for the existence of the Gods, and produce the sun, moon, stars, and earth, claiming for them a divine being, if we would listen to the aforesaid philosophers we should say that they are earth and stones only, which can have no care at all of human affairs, and that all religion is a cooking up of words and a make-believe.
He then turns his guns on the evolutionary materialism that even then was a serious challenge, speaking in the same voice:
[[The avant garde philosophers, teachers and artists c. 400 BC] say that the greatest and fairest things are the work of nature and of chance, the lesser of art [[ i.e. techne], which, receiving from nature the greater and primeval creations, moulds and fashions all those lesser works which are generally termed artificial . . . They say that fire and water, and earth and air [[i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as to the bodies which come next in order-earth, and sun, and moon, and stars-they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them-of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only . . . . [[T]hese people would say that the Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.- [[Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT. (Cf. here for Locke's views and sources on a very different base for grounding liberty as opposed to license and resulting anarchistic "every man does what is right in his own eyes" chaos leading to tyranny.)] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might [[ Evolutionary materialism leads to the promotion of amorality], and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [[Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality "naturally" leads to continual contentions and power struggles; cf. dramatisation here], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others [[such amoral factions, if they gain power, "naturally" tend towards ruthless tyranny; here, too, Plato hints at the career of Alcibiades], and not in legal subjection to them . . .
Resemblance to the moral chaos on our current scene is not coincidental. So also, above [and pardon if this post misses its proper place, I find the threading scheme a problem to work with . . . ], we have a case where evidence of just how corrosive evolutionary materialism and its wider influences through radical relativisation of thought and of morality are, has been transmuted into the false notion that serious living encounter with God through the risen Christ, the life transforming gospel, the indwelling and empowering of the poured our Spirit in the communion of the saints do not work. But, to maintain such a fallacy, direct positive evidence of millions of transformed lives across 2,000 years and all around us has to be suppressed. As in, "suppressing the truth . . . " In short, it seems the universal acid eats away at reasoning and due care and attention to the balance of evidence, too. As can be seen all across this thread. KFkairosfocus_{February 5, 2012
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Thanks for your post vjtorley. First of all, I should say that I'm not terribly interested in "isms" because I don't find that categorising belief systems, or, worse, labeling people with them, is terribly useful. I don't think I'm a "scient-ist" though I am, of course a "scientist", so I don't have a lot to say about your Rosenberg quote. But I'll have a go:
Hi Elizabeth, While we’re on the subject of morality, have you had a look at Professor Edward Feser’s latest post, Reading Rosenberg, Part VII in response to Professor Alex Rosenberg’s The Atheist’s Guide to Reality? It’s quite a thought-provoking piece. Here’s what Rosenberg writes in his book:
There is really one bit of bad news that remains to trouble scientism. We have to acknowledge (to ourselves, at least) that many questions we want the “right” answers to just don’t have any. These are questions about the morality of stem-cell research or abortion or affirmative action or gay marriage or our obligations to future generations. Many enlightened people, including many scientists, think that reasonable people can eventually find the right answers to such questions. Alas, it will turn out that all anyone can really find are the answers that they like. The same goes for those who disagree with them. Real moral disputes can be ended in lots of ways: by voting, by decree, by fatigue of the disputants, by the force of example that changes social mores. But they can never really be resolved by finding the correct answers. There are none. (p. 96)
I would tend to agree that there are no "correct" answers to many moral dilemmas. Sometimes there is simply a choice between two evils, and one has to try to choose the lesser evil. Science can sometimes help (for example, by shedding light on the question as to what kind of suffering alternative courses of action might lead to) but I don't see that it can provide inerrant answers, not least because the equation may be rather different in different cases. That's what makes moral dilemmas so difficult. If you are interested, you might like to read my mother's book, The Harm We Do, in which she tackled a number of thorny ethical dilemmas encountered in medical practice, from the point of view of a catholic doctor. The original title of her book was "The Cross of Unknowing" which was a play on words to make the point that ethics is "about what to do when we don't know what to do" and the burden it places on those responsible for those decisions.
[T]here is strong evidence that natural selection produces lots of false but useful beliefs. Just think about religion, any religion. Every one of them is chock full of false beliefs. We won’t shake any of them. There are so many, they are so long-lasting, that false religious beliefs must have conferred lots of adaptive advantages on believers. (p. 111) Natural selection sometimes selects for false beliefs and sometimes even selects against the acquisition of true beliefs. It sometimes selects for norms we reject as morally wrong. Therefore, it can’t be a process that’s reliable for providing us with what we consider correct moral beliefs. (p. 112) Most people are nice most of the time, and that includes nihilists. There is no reason for anyone to worry about our stealing the silver or mistreating children in our care. As for moral monsters like Hitler, protecting ourselves against them is made inevitable by the very same evolutionary forces that make niceness unavoidable for most of us. There is nothing morally right about being nice, but we are stuck with it for the foreseeable future. (p. 144)
I'm not at all sure what is meant by "natural selection" here. It seems very muddled.
To the charge of being soft on crime, scientism pleads guilty. According to scientism, no one does wrong freely, so no one should really be punished. Prisons are for rehab and protection of society only. To the charge of permitting considerable redistribution of income and wealth, it must also plead guilty, and for the same reasons. (p. 299)
I do find it very annoying when people anthropomorphise abstract nouns. I don't know what scientism is charged with that means that it has to plead guilty. I wish the guy would just say what he means. But I would agree that punishment as retribution doesn't make a lot of sense. As deterrence, physical prevention, rehabilation and reparation, it does. I'd like to see justice systems focus on those, and drop the retributative element. Not because people aren't morally responsible for their actions, but because holding them so seems part of reparation and rehabilation (and, to some extent, deterrence) to me. Retribution seems a throwback to me.
Would you like to explain why you think Rosenberg’s logic is wrong?
Well, I have said what my view is. I don't see a lot of logic, so I haven't commented on it.
Here are Professor Feser’s comments:
Scientism undermines morality because, inheriting as it does the early moderns’ “mechanistic” conception of nature (which was defined more than anything else by a rejection of Aristotelian formal and final causes), it rejects the immanent teleology and essentialism necessary to making sense of morality. If neither human beings nor anything else have any ends toward which they are directed by virtue of their essence, then there can be no objective basis in terms of which to define what is good and bad for us. (See The Last Superstition for the full story.) Modern atheism tends toward nihilism, then, not because of its rejection of God per se, but because it is typically grounded in scientism…
Well, I think that is simply fallacious. I don't think we need to appeal to "essence" to hold people morally responsible for their actions. And it seems to me his argument is based on that premise.
From a Thomist perspective, Feser also writes:
[I]t must be emphasized that it is indeed Rosenberg’s scientism, and not his atheism per se, that entails nihilism. For morality does not depend on religion in quite the way many people suppose it does. Many religious people think of morality as essentially a set of arbitrary divine commands, so that to deny the existence of a divine commandment-giver is implicitly to deny the very possibility of morality. Atheists of the sort who populate Woody Allen movies seem to be of the same opinion. But things are not so simple. As other atheists rightly point out, if morality rested on nothing but arbitrary divine commands, then anything at all — including torturing babies just for fun, say — would be morally legitimate if God commanded it, which seems absurd.
I certainly agree with that, which is why I find Divine Command Theory, as articulated by Craig, not just absurd, but immoral. Fortunately, most theists don't accept that theory.
Moreover, we would be left with no explanation of why we should obey God’s arbitrary commands in the first place.
Precisely.
The only alternative to this view, these atheists think, is to acknowledge a source of morality entirely independent of God. This, of course, is the famous Euthyphro dilemma. But the dilemma is a false one – certainly from the point of view of Thomism, for reasons I explain in Aquinas . As with all the other supposedly big, bad objections to theism, this one rests on caricature, and a failure to make crucial distinctions. First of all, we need to distinguish the issue of the content of moral obligations from the issue of what gives them their obligatory force.
Yup.
Divine command is relevant to the second issue, but not the first. Second, it is an error to think that tying morality in any way to divine commands must make it to that extent arbitrary, a product of capricious divine fiat. That might be so if we think of divine commands in terms of Ockham’s voluntarism and nominalism, but not if, following Aquinas, we hold that will follows upon intellect, so that God always acts in accordance with reason. Third, that does not entail that what determines the content of morality and God’s rationale for commanding as He does is in any way independent of Him. I have elaborated upon all of this in an earlier post, to which the interested reader is directed. The point to emphasize for now is that though there is a sense in which God is the ultimate ground of morality (if only because he is the ultimate ground of everything), the proximate ground of morality is human nature, or at least human nature as understood in light of a classical (and especially Aristotelian) essentialist and teleological metaphysics. And human nature — and thus, at least to a large extent, morality — would be what they are even if, per impossibile, God did not exist (just as the periodic table of the elements would be what it is even if, per impossibile, God did not exist). This too I have explained at greater length in Aquinas, and in another earlier post.
Would you care to comment on this passage? Will you at least acknowledge that theists are not bound to accept a capricious moral code?
Some seem to be. Some aren't. I don't think Feser is right to say that Euthyphro's dilemma is not a dilemma, I think he, with Aquinas, simply comes down on the other horn - we recognise God's will (if we call it that) because we know that if we make a reasonable decision then it will be in accord with God's will, not the other way round. In which case, atheists (I'm not going to comment on scientism - I'm not sure what is meant) are just as capable of making reasonable moral decisions, they just don't call them God's will. I would agree with Feser on this: "...though there is a sense in which God is the ultimate ground of morality, the proximate ground of morality is human nature". That's pretty well what I've been trying to say, except of course that that means that we do not have to accept that God is the ultimate ground of marlity in order to base our morality, proximately, in human nature.
Interestingly, you seem to accept a form of teleology which you refer to as teleonomy.
I accept both teleology and teleonomy, the first denoting the purpose conceived by a conscious agent in taking a particular course of action, often using an object for a particular purpose e.g. a tool to achieve an goal; and the second denoting the intrinsic function a feature of an entity serves in promoting the continued existence (persistence) of that entity. Thus my heart serves the teleonomic purpose of keeping me alive; my fingers serve the teleologic purpose of enabling me to type this post. I do not intentionally use my heart to stay alive, yet it serves that purpose; I do intentionally use my fingers to type this post. This is why Monod distinguished between the two, and I think it is an important distinction.
It sounds a lot like what Feser would call intrinsic finality, as opposed to extrinsic finality, which makes explicit appeal to a Designer. As you are well aware, though, Aquinas (of whom Feser is a great fan) believed that even the existence of intrinsic finality in Nature was sufficient to establish the existence of God. (Aristotle’s view was different.) However, Aquinas (and Aristotle) were both firmly convinced that moral norms could be derived from a knowledge of a being’s intrinsic ends, whose existence you apparently acknowledge.
Not sure what intrinsic ends are. But I do agree that ethical principles (possibly what you mean by moral norms) can, and must, take into account the purposes other people entertain for themselves, and in turn, for others. That is why, for example, most societies forbid stealing - if I steal my neighbour's goods, my neighbour's purposes are frustrated. I don't know if that's too proximate for you :) But similarly, if I steal my neigbour's husband, or her hopes, the same applies. We are teleological beings, as well as social beings, and if we are to live together harmoniously, we must respect each other's autonomy - their purposes - as we do our own. Which boils down to love, of course.
The atheist philosopher Philippa Foot thought likewise: she believed that we could build morality on a foundation of natural goodness. I wrote about her ethical views in a post entitled, Death of a grande dame: can we build morality on the foundation of natural goodness? . What are your thoughts on the matter, Elizabeth? If you accepted Foot’s line of argument, you would have to also accept the truth of some form of essentialism, the existence of objective moral norms,
I don't know what is meant by "objective moral norms".
and the possibility of deriving “ought” from “is”. However, you seem to reject this view of morality in favor of one based solely on the Golden Rule, interpreted in a way that makes personal preferences normative (“Do as you would be done by” entails some form of altruism).
Yes, of course it does. I'm not seeing your point. And I still don't know what people mean by this phrase "deriving 'ought' from 'is'". Can you unpack it for me?
You also write above that the evolutionary purpose of a biological process, such as sex (which is roughly equivalent to what Aristotle would call its natural purpose or end) is not morally binding on us, and that what matters ethically is the purpose we choose to imbue it with.
It's not that it's "not morally binding". It's that it's morally irrelevant. That's why we have to distinguish teleonomy from teleology. But yes, what matters ethically is the purpose we make of it.
It’s been said that Aristotle, Kant and Hume (who influenced Bentham) were the only three thinkers in history with anything genuinely original to say on the subject of morality. In whose camp do you find yourself, and why? If, as I suspect, you find yourself in the utilitarian camp, how do you avoid the nastier implications of a consistent utilitarianism – e.g. that there is no act, however vile, that we may not be required to do, if it proves to be conducive to the greatest happiness of the greatest number?
I'm probably closest to a utilitarian, except that I don't think "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" is defensible. I hope I would be one of The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas (a great moral tale, btw, by a great atheist writer). But I think only a small tweak is in order; the greatest happiness of the greatest number compatible with the misery of none. Or rather, although it sounds a little cold, but I think it is more accurate, and more elegant: the maximisation of autonomy for all. It works better than you'd think :)
For an appalling example of this kind of thinking, please see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vPW4aZ0BUI . Dr. Sam Harris says that pushing an innocent man into the path of an oncoming train is OK, if it is necessary in order to save a greater number of human lives. I’d recommend that you have a look at this online critique of Sam Harris’ utilitarianism, from a secular perspective: http://robephiles.hubpages.com.....of-Science .
That's a classic question, and a lot of work has been done on it. It turns out that while most people would rather see fewer people killed than more, they would balk at taking action that would result in the death of someone who would otherwise have lived in order to save the lives of people who would otherwise die. I find that kind of highly contrived ethical dilemma distracting, because it leaves out the risk evaluation part of decision-making which is of immense importance. I guess occasionally, particularly in war time, people really do have to make those decisions. Churchill allegedly deliberately failed to warn the people of Coventry of an impending air attack because to do so would have betrayed to the Germns the fact that the Enigma code had been cracked. I don't know whether Churchill did right or wrong, and we can never know, because we can't run the counter-factual, and in any case, most people would agree that the untimely death of anyone is an infinite tragedy, and so summing deaths doesn't really work. But I don't think any moral philosophy gives us answers to that kind of dilemma - in fact I think that by decontextualising them, it makes them unsolvable, when in fact they are solved, for better or worse, by people who have to make, literally, life or death decisions as part of their jobs. But I guess if it came down to it, and I was forced to choose between two evils with no other information other than that one involved evil to more people than the the other, I guess I'd go with the little I had, and choose the smaller number of casualties. Who wouldn't? In real life, I mean?
If you cannot bring yourself to be an Aristotelian atheist, what’s stopping you from becoming a Kantian, Elizabeth? That would be far preferable to sinking into the ethical quagmire of utilitarianism. Thoughts?
Well, as I said, I don't know my isms, so I can't answer your question. But I guess I've given you some clues as to my position :) And I still have a soft spot for Aquinas.Elizabeth Liddle_{February 5, 2012
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Liz: “Nope. But not objectively immoral for those who regard do not see themselves as part of a wider community beyond their own local society.” And here is the atheist incoherence, front and center. Here you admit, that to the Mashco-Piro, kidnapping is not objectively immoral, that it is relatively immoral, all the while claiming atheism can ground objective morality. Why are your feelings about kidnapping children more valid than the Mashco-Piro? Liz: “because they do not see themselves as part of a wider community” By compounding the incoherent logic, if one sees themselves as part of the wider community, then morals becomes objective. How do we then, based on darwinst-atheism, decide if “seeing yourself as part of the wider community,” is more valid than “not seeing yourself as part of the wider community”?
Again, you miss my entire point. There is no entirely objective way of figuring out what is right and what is wrong. However, we can, collectively, as human beings, try to figure out sets of rules that promote a harmonious society. Obviously if we define that society very narrowly, we will find ourselves permitting atrocities on populations that we do not consider part of our own society. And, over many millenia, as a human community, we have, repeatedly, grounded our morality in the Golden Rule, because that rule tends to promote harmonious societies; we have alos, increasingly, broadened our concept of what our society consists, moving, mostly, from a kind of tribal morality to a more global morality, and even, these days, concern for species other than our own. And we can see this progression in the bible itself - the old testament is full of "tribal" morality, in which what benefits the Israelites is portrayed right, even if it means kidnapping and enslaving the woman and children (sometimes slaying the children) of other tribes - in other words, exactly the morality you say the Mashco Piro had. In the New Testament, and in later rabbinic sources, we find the Golden Rule articulated, and Jesus is reported as going out of his way to include gentiles in his notion of society. Nonetheless, Christians have frequently regarded non-Christians as fair game, including Jews and Muslims, and even each other. Positing some "objective" morality "out there", and defined by some deity may sound very fine, but it is absolutely no use as a grounding for ethics. We are all, theist or atheist, in the end, responsible for our own decisions, and shifting the burden or responsibility for those decisions on to some sacred text is a cop-out. Even if, as a theist, I hear a voice from God telling me to do something, that does not make it right - I have to use my own discernment to figure out whether the voice is really from God or not. If someone hears a voice they think is from God telling them to murder prostitutes (as Peter Sutcliffe did), Christians (Barb in this case) say, oh that man was psychotic, that doesn't count. But, apparently, if an Israelite hears a voice they think is from God telling them to massacre, kidnap or enslave the Canaanites - apparently that's not psychotic. Where is "objective" the moral standard here? It's simply barbarous nonsense, and fortunately I don't think anyone here (not even William Lane Craig) would defend a modern war criminal who pleaded that s/he was obeying God's command. We know they weren't because we know that war crimes are evil. How? Not because the bible tells us so, for sure. And not because God tells us (or not through the bible anyway). All we have is what we can figure out, with help from the wisdom of our fellow human beings. Which is exactly what atheists have. No more, no less. It's not perfect, but it's the best we can do, and hugely better than claiming some notional "objective" morality that is, unfortunately, unavailable in any unambiguous form.
Dr Liddle is trying to imply that the Christian faith’s morality is just the arbitrary whim of the biggest and strongest form of might makes right, and of course — given the sadly revealing context of the thread — the comment fairly drips with the usual insinuations of the right-wing, theocratic, would be tyrannical rule of what Aiden so viciously stereotypes as the criminal, vampire clergy.
My comments "drip with" absolutely nothing, kf. Please stop reading what isn't there, and do me the courtesy of actually reading what is.
She has, however, utterly failed to come to solid grips with the principles and premise of how a worldview needs to rest on an inherently moral foundation, or it will never be able to soundly and on objective warrant introduce morality, due to the infamous IS-OUGHT gap.
This "IS-OUGHT" mantra is becoming increasingly opaque. I thought I had an idea of what you meant by it, but by now I simply have no idea. It seems to have become nothing more than a slogan. Morality is the term we give to the domain of human decision-making that deals with the conflict between what benefits us personally, now, and what may benefit other people, now, or in the future. When such conflicts arise, we use the verb "ought" as in "I'd like to do this but I ought to do that". There are many factors that contribute to such conflicts, but "IS" seems to me a totally inadequate way to describe them, and a totally incoherent way to summarise this complex domain of human decision-making. Human beings, whether theist, or atheist, derive their sense of what they ought to do from all kinds of influences, including their upbringing, and the cultural traditions of their society; their inbuilt capacity to empathise with others - to see things from another's point of view, and even "feel their pain" (quite literally, sometimes); and their capacity, through their language function, to reify ideals like "justice" and "love" and "trust". Those factors contribute to the human sense that there are things we "ought" to do, even when we would "like" to do something else. That's the foundation of morality. Then we have to deal with ethics - what are the things we "ought" to do? Religion may help, but it's not the only source of guidance, and, is, I would argue, a potentially dangerous source if we regard it as license to simply follow the rules in a sacred text, rather than figure out what our collective sense of human justice requires. And it worries me deeply that some people are still, on this board, attempting to defend the indefensible (the alleged war crimes allegedly ordered by an alleged deity) on the one hand, yet castigating the "evolutionary materialists" (quotes because it is not my term) for promoting amorality and nihilism.Elizabeth Liddle_{February 5, 2012
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Dr Torley, well said, as usual. KFkairosfocus_{February 5, 2012
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Onlookers: Alinsky, rules for radicals -- resort to toxic mockery (and turnabout, distractive accusations) instead of actually addressing a serious issue on its merits. Utterly revealing of the underlying irresponsibility on display from evolutionary materialists, from the OP's expose on. In short, inadvertently, GCU manages to underscore the point on the significance of the is-ought gap faced by such materialists. Passing by for a moment. KFkairosfocus_{February 5, 2012
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Barb, Click here for an illustration of how to use block quotes in your comments. It will make your comments much more readable!champignon_{February 5, 2012
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GCUGreyArea weighs in: “Shame it seems not to work in practice.” So you are asserting that you have proof that no Christian anywhere follows biblical standards of morality? Oh, of course you don’t. You don’t have knowledge of all Christians. Your baseless assertion is noted and summarily dismissed. “Terrible moral guidance? “If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.” Cheap at the price, although I can’t imagine how it would work for a mail order service!” Didn’t we already cover this? Yes, we did, in another thread. Did you miss that discussion? “Yes indeed, see above …” Taking scriptures out of context and claiming that it’s terrible moral guidance only exposes your ignorance. Nothing else. “Incorrect, God had given the land to the Canaanites, but then this guy Abraham came along, coveted the land and made up a story about how God said he could have it, and that it was OK to kill them all because … whatever, God said it was OK, OK?” And your proof for this is…where? “To the victors, the documenting of history – so of course all the holy documents documenting how God gave the Canaanites the land were destroyed by Abraham … ” Proof. Evidence is required when positive assertions are made. Got any? “Apart from God that is :“I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord..” (Hitler)” Hitler didn’t like religion or Christianity in particular but he was savvy enough to know that he needed to control religion in Germany in order to better wield power over the people. “Obviously, but it doesn’t mean no accountability.” Accountability to what, exactly? “Of course the truth is that the bible is designed by God to be an inconsistent mess – It is a test of humanities ability to ground our morality in our own common humanity rather than in individual claims of almighty right ” Your ill-formed opinion is so far off the mark it’s laughable.Barb_{February 5, 2012
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Hi Elizabeth, While we're on the subject of morality, have you had a look at Professor Edward Feser's latest post, Reading Rosenberg, Part VII in response to Professor Alex Rosenberg’s The Atheist’s Guide to Reality? It's quite a thought-provoking piece. Here's what Rosenberg writes in his book:
There is really one bit of bad news that remains to trouble scientism. We have to acknowledge (to ourselves, at least) that many questions we want the “right” answers to just don’t have any. These are questions about the morality of stem-cell research or abortion or affirmative action or gay marriage or our obligations to future generations. Many enlightened people, including many scientists, think that reasonable people can eventually find the right answers to such questions. Alas, it will turn out that all anyone can really find are the answers that they like. The same goes for those who disagree with them. Real moral disputes can be ended in lots of ways: by voting, by decree, by fatigue of the disputants, by the force of example that changes social mores. But they can never really be resolved by finding the correct answers. There are none. (p. 96) [T]here is strong evidence that natural selection produces lots of false but useful beliefs. Just think about religion, any religion. Every one of them is chock full of false beliefs. We won’t shake any of them. There are so many, they are so long-lasting, that false religious beliefs must have conferred lots of adaptive advantages on believers. (p. 111) Natural selection sometimes selects for false beliefs and sometimes even selects against the acquisition of true beliefs. It sometimes selects for norms we reject as morally wrong. Therefore, it can’t be a process that’s reliable for providing us with what we consider correct moral beliefs. (p. 112) Most people are nice most of the time, and that includes nihilists. There is no reason for anyone to worry about our stealing the silver or mistreating children in our care. As for moral monsters like Hitler, protecting ourselves against them is made inevitable by the very same evolutionary forces that make niceness unavoidable for most of us. There is nothing morally right about being nice, but we are stuck with it for the foreseeable future. (p. 144) To the charge of being soft on crime, scientism pleads guilty. According to scientism, no one does wrong freely, so no one should really be punished. Prisons are for rehab and protection of society only. To the charge of permitting considerable redistribution of income and wealth, it must also plead guilty, and for the same reasons. (p. 299)
Would you like to explain why you think Rosenberg's logic is wrong? Here are Professor Feser's comments:
Scientism undermines morality because, inheriting as it does the early moderns’ “mechanistic” conception of nature (which was defined more than anything else by a rejection of Aristotelian formal and final causes), it rejects the immanent teleology and essentialism necessary to making sense of morality. If neither human beings nor anything else have any ends toward which they are directed by virtue of their essence, then there can be no objective basis in terms of which to define what is good and bad for us. (See The Last Superstition for the full story.) Modern atheism tends toward nihilism, then, not because of its rejection of God per se, but because it is typically grounded in scientism...
From a Thomist perspective, Feser also writes:
[I]t must be emphasized that it is indeed Rosenberg's scientism, and not his atheism per se, that entails nihilism. For morality does not depend on religion in quite the way many people suppose it does. Many religious people think of morality as essentially a set of arbitrary divine commands, so that to deny the existence of a divine commandment-giver is implicitly to deny the very possibility of morality. Atheists of the sort who populate Woody Allen movies seem to be of the same opinion. But things are not so simple. As other atheists rightly point out, if morality rested on nothing but arbitrary divine commands, then anything at all -- including torturing babies just for fun, say -- would be morally legitimate if God commanded it, which seems absurd. Moreover, we would be left with no explanation of why we should obey God's arbitrary commands in the first place. The only alternative to this view, these atheists think, is to acknowledge a source of morality entirely independent of God. This, of course, is the famous Euthyphro dilemma. But the dilemma is a false one - certainly from the point of view of Thomism, for reasons I explain in Aquinas . As with all the other supposedly big, bad objections to theism, this one rests on caricature, and a failure to make crucial distinctions. First of all, we need to distinguish the issue of the content of moral obligations from the issue of what gives them their obligatory force. Divine command is relevant to the second issue, but not the first. Second, it is an error to think that tying morality in any way to divine commands must make it to that extent arbitrary, a product of capricious divine fiat. That might be so if we think of divine commands in terms of Ockham's voluntarism and nominalism, but not if, following Aquinas, we hold that will follows upon intellect, so that God always acts in accordance with reason. Third, that does not entail that what determines the content of morality and God's rationale for commanding as He does is in any way independent of Him. I have elaborated upon all of this in an earlier post, to which the interested reader is directed. The point to emphasize for now is that though there is a sense in which God is the ultimate ground of morality (if only because he is the ultimate ground of everything), the proximate ground of morality is human nature, or at least human nature as understood in light of a classical (and especially Aristotelian) essentialist and teleological metaphysics. And human nature -- and thus, at least to a large extent, morality -- would be what they are even if, per impossibile, God did not exist (just as the periodic table of the elements would be what it is even if, per impossibile, God did not exist). This too I have explained at greater length in Aquinas, and in another earlier post.
Would you care to comment on this passage? Will you at least acknowledge that theists are not bound to accept a capricious moral code? Interestingly, you seem to accept a form of teleology which you refer to as teleonomy. It sounds a lot like what Feser would call intrinsic finality, as opposed to extrinsic finality, which makes explicit appeal to a Designer. As you are well aware, though, Aquinas (of whom Feser is a great fan) believed that even the existence of intrinsic finality in Nature was sufficient to establish the existence of God. (Aristotle's view was different.) However, Aquinas (and Aristotle) were both firmly convinced that moral norms could be derived from a knowledge of a being's intrinsic ends, whose existence you apparently acknowledge. The atheist philosopher Philippa Foot thought likewise: she believed that we could build morality on a foundation of natural goodness. I wrote about her ethical views in a post entitled, Death of a grande dame: can we build morality on the foundation of natural goodness? . What are your thoughts on the matter, Elizabeth? If you accepted Foot's line of argument, you would have to also accept the truth of some form of essentialism, the existence of objective moral norms, and the possibility of deriving "ought" from "is". However, you seem to reject this view of morality in favor of one based solely on the Golden Rule, interpreted in a way that makes personal preferences normative ("Do as you would be done by" entails some form of altruism). You also write above that the evolutionary purpose of a biological process, such as sex (which is roughly equivalent to what Aristotle would call its natural purpose or end) is not morally binding on us, and that what matters ethically is the purpose we choose to imbue it with. It's been said that Aristotle, Kant and Hume (who influenced Bentham) were the only three thinkers in history with anything genuinely original to say on the subject of morality. In whose camp do you find yourself, and why? If, as I suspect, you find yourself in the utilitarian camp, how do you avoid the nastier implications of a consistent utilitarianism - e.g. that there is no act, however vile, that we may not be required to do, if it proves to be conducive to the greatest happiness of the greatest number? For an appalling example of this kind of thinking, please see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vPW4aZ0BUI . Dr. Sam Harris says that pushing an innocent man into the path of an oncoming train is OK, if it is necessary in order to save a greater number of human lives. I'd recommend that you have a look at this online critique of Sam Harris' utilitarianism, from a secular perspective: http://robephiles.hubpages.com/hub/Sam-Harris-and-the-Moral-Failure-of-Science . If you cannot bring yourself to be an Aristotelian atheist, what's stopping you from becoming a Kantian, Elizabeth? That would be far preferable to sinking into the ethical quagmire of utilitarianism. Thoughts?vjtorley_{February 5, 2012
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I think massacres are evil, period. My point—which you seem to not understand—is that Christians have a source of moral guidance that would ostensibly prevent massacres in the first place, whereas atheists do not.
Shame it seems not to work in practice.
Terrible moral guidance?
"If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days." Cheap at the price, although I can't imagine how it would work for a mail order service!
Christians have a source of moral guidance whereas atheists do not.
Yes indeed, see above ...
With respect to the Canaanites, there are a few things you need to understand. Firstly, God had promised that land to Abraham and his family. The Canaanites had no rights to that land, so this destruction fulfilled prophecy.
Incorrect, God had given the land to the Canaanites, but then this guy Abraham came along, coveted the land and made up a story about how God said he could have it, and that it was OK to kill them all because ... whatever, God said it was OK, OK? To the victors, the documenting of history - so of course all the holy documents documenting how God gave the Canaanites the land were destroyed by Abraham ... ;)
And the 20the century despots did not have anything giving them any type of moral guidelines.
Apart from God that is :"I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.." (Hitler) Of course, you get the standard 'No true Christian' response ...
‘No God’ means no accountability to a divine authority
Obviously, but it doesn't mean no accountability. Of course the truth is that the bible is designed by God to be an inconsistent mess - It is a test of humanities ability to ground our morality in our own common humanity rather than in individual claims of almighty right ;)GCUGreyArea_{February 5, 2012
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"No, it has not. Did you read 20.2?” Did you read my post? Atheism has far more bloodshed on its hands than Christianity does. “And do you honestly think it is less evil to massacre a city of 10,000 than a city of 100,000?” I think massacres are evil, period. My point—which you seem to not understand—is that Christians have a source of moral guidance that would ostensibly prevent massacres in the first place, whereas atheists do not. “I’ve already stated that the Golden Rule is good moral guidance. Just as well that it’s in the bible, but a shame that such terrible moral guidance is in there as well.” Terrible moral guidance? Examples, please. And try to give the entire context of the scriptures rather than cherry-picking ones that you don’t understand. “And you have moved the goal posts radically (I see you did see Champignon’s post).” No, I didn’t. He makes salient points. Again—Christians have a source of moral guidance whereas atheists do not. “Catholics don’t count? People who hear voices they think are from God don’t count? Even though it did count for the Israelites who thought God was telling them to slaughter the Canaanites?” Catholics count, but they are not representative of all Christianity. Surely you can figure this simple point out yourself. Hearing voices has nothing to do with the discussion. We’re not talking about mental illness at all. This is you moving the goalposts. With respect to the Canaanites, there are a few things you need to understand. Firstly, God had promised that land to Abraham and his family. The Canaanites had no rights to that land, so this destruction fulfilled prophecy. Secondly, we could ask: could the two tribes have coexisted peacefully? Not really. Immorality, pagan worship, and child sacrifice were widespread in Canaan. Bible historian Henry H. Halley notes that archaeologists excavating the area “found great numbers of jars containing the remains of children who had been sacrificed to Baal [a prominent god of the Canaanites].” He adds: “The whole area proved to be a cemetery for new-born babes. . . . Canaanites worshipped, by immoral indulgence, as a religious rite, in the presence of their gods; and then, by murdering their first-born children, as a sacrifice to these same gods. It seems that, in large measure, the land of Canaan had become a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah on a national scale. . . . Archaeologists who dig in the ruins of Canaanite cities wonder that God did not destroy them sooner than he did.” Thirdly, God knew long beforehand that Canaan’s inhabitants were headed in the wrong direction. Yet, instead of immediately wiping them out, he patiently allowed 400 years to pass until their error had “come to completion.”—Genesis 15:16. Fourthly, When the sin of the Canaanites reached the point where all hope of improvement was gone, God brought their end. Even so, he did not blindly execute all Canaanites. Why? Because not all were beyond reform. Those willing to change, such as Rahab and the Gibeonites, were shown mercy.—Joshua 9:3-11, 16-27; Hebrews 11:31. Fifth, the destruction of human life is not pleasant to contemplate. Really, though, it was God’s love that impelled him to take such drastic measures against the wicked. To illustrate: When a patient develops gangrene, doctors often have little choice but to amputate the infected limb. Few would enjoy performing such a procedure, but a good doctor knows that the alternative—the spread of infection—is worse. Because he cares, he carries out this unpleasant task for the good of his patient. Similarly, God did not enjoy destroying the Canaanites. He himself says: “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” (Ezekiel 33:11, Darby)At the same time, he purposed for the nation of Israel to produce the Messiah, the one who would open the way to salvation for all those exercising faith. (John 3:16) Thus, God simply could not allow Israel to become infected by the disgusting practices of the Canaanites. He therefore ordered the Canaanites to be cut off, or evicted, from the land. In so doing, God demonstrated outstanding love—love that moved him to perform an unpleasant task for the benefit of his faithful worshippers. “Barb, the bible is only good moral guidance if you ignore the bits that aren’t. And the way you know how to ignore the bits that aren’t is that you are perfectly capable of figuring out what is right and wrong before you even open the book.” Thomas Jefferson would agree. He wrote that ‘nature’s law’ is self-evident. Reason isn’t needed to discover it, but one simply knows it. Without an objective standard of meaning and morality, then life is truly meaningless. There would be no absolute right or wrong. Everything—from cheating on your taxes, telling a lie, or genocide—would be a matter of opinion. Where we differ is that I believe that the entire Bible is filled with good moral guidance as it was inspired by God. Those who don’t understand it might think the way you do. “Exactly the same is true of all of us, believers and unbelievers, as kairosfocus says. The only difference is that we don’t think that sense is a Divine gift, but rather something that we evolved as social animals.” I notice you didn’t answer my point about rape. What about it: right or wrong? “Lizzie has made most of the relevant points but let me stress that this argument from numbers of people killed is daft. The question is does religion make people less evil? Leaders both religious and otherwise have massacred in large numbers throughout history. The 20th century despots just had more opportunity – more people to kill and more resources to do it. Do you really think the first Crusaders stopped massacring the Muslims of Jerusalem because their Christian morality told them they had exceeded their quota?” And the 20the century despots did not have anything giving them any type of moral guidelines. Why? They were atheists! They hated religion! Few would deny that religion has caused much suffering. But is God at fault? No! He is no more at fault than a car manufacturer would be for an accident caused by a driver using a cell phone. Mankind’s suffering has many causes, one of which is more fundamental than beliefs. The Bible identifies it as inherent imperfection. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) This sinful inclination tends to foster selfishness, undue pride, a desire for moral independence, and violence. (Genesis 8:21) It also causes people to rationalize and to gravitate toward beliefs that excuse wrongdoing. (Romans 1:24-27) Jesus Christ rightly said: “Out of the heart come wicked reasonings, murders, adulteries, fornications, thieveries, false testimonies, blasphemies.”—Matthew 15:19. At this point, a distinction must be made between true worship—that is, worship that is acceptable in God’s eyes—and false worship. True worship would help people to fight against base inclinations. It would encourage self-sacrificing love, peace, kindness, goodness, mildness, self-control, marital loyalty and fidelity, and respect for others. (Galatians 5:22, 23) False religion, on the other hand, would tend to cater to popular trends—‘tickling people’s ears,’ as the Bible says—by condoning some of the bad things Jesus condemned.—2 Timothy 4:3. Might atheism contribute to the same moral ambiguity or confusion? ‘No God’ means no accountability to a divine authority, as well as “no objective values which we are obligated to respect,” says law professor Phillip Johnson. Morality thus becomes relative, with each person determining his own standards—if he chooses to have any. No doubt such thinking makes atheism an appealing philosophy for some people.—Psalm 14:1.Barb_{February 5, 2012
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Or a secular pacifist. My point is that religion isn't the common denominator here. And Buddhists don't have a God figure.Elizabeth Liddle_{February 5, 2012
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Liz wrote:
Barb, the bible is only good moral guidance if you ignore the bits that aren’t. And the way you know how to ignore the bits that aren’t is that you are perfectly capable of figuring out what is right and wrong before you even open the book.
The tendency of believers to project their own morality onto God, rather than vice-versa, has been studied: Believers' estimates of God's beliefs are more egocentric than estimates of other people's beliefschampignon_{February 5, 2012
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F/N: Dr Liddle et al should note that when a moral hazard is real, and has been warranted, to warn of such and call for taking heed is not empty fear-mongering. Of course, there are now far too many fallacious assertions and snide or overt personal attacks above for me to respond point by point, but the very fact of that resort in the teeth of well warranted warning on an agenda exemplified by Aiden's vampire Christian clergy caricature, and by the failure to seriously and soundly address the IS-OUGHT gap that is the root of the hazard, are quite revealing on what is really going on. KFkairosfocus_{February 5, 2012
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Let us take heed, lest in not too many decades hence (if that long), we begin to again repeat some of the grimmest and least excusable chapters of history; driven by the animosity of scapegoating - because its all the evil atheists fault, they are the ones to blame. FEAR THEM!!!11!! HATE THEM!! CORRECT THEM WITH MR LEATHERS!!!. LOL - you really can't see the irony in your own hypocrisy can you ;)GCUGreyArea_{February 5, 2012
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Re "the animosity of scapegoating" -- Again, the irony whistles right over KF's head.champignon_{February 5, 2012
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Make that "Your false accusation..."champignon_{February 5, 2012
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Onlookers: perhaps the most revealing feature of the thread above is something that is conspicuously missing. Look above carefully -- remember, this is in the context of a video that smears representative Christians as blood-mongering vampires -- and see if you see any serious attempt on the part of advocates of evolutionary materialism to acknowledge the positive contributions of the Christian Faith or of Christians over the centuries and down to today. This consistent failure, in this context, is symptomatic of the politically correct trend to manipulate sentiments to stir deep-seated hostility to the Christian faith and its adherents. Thus, this thread is, in the end a tellingly revealing glimpse into the agendas at work in our civilisation. and of course, Aiden simply trumpets in crude tones the smear that is being more subtly drummed out, day by day, hour by hour, far and wide. This is a red flag warning, if ever there was one. Let us take heed, lest in not too many decades hence (if that long), we begin to again repeat some of the grimmest and least excusable chapters of history; driven by the animosity of scapegoating. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{February 5, 2012
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And immediately, we see the significance of principles and precepts such as thou shalt do no murder, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not slander, thou shalt judge fairly etc. [Emphasis mine]
I don't think you see the significance of the one in bold, KF. You're false accusation against Aiden is a slander if ever there was one.champignon_{February 5, 2012
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JDFL: Dr Liddle is trying to imply that the Christian faith's morality is just the arbitrary whim of the biggest and strongest form of might makes right, and of course -- given the sadly revealing context of the thread -- the comment fairly drips with the usual insinuations of the right-wing, theocratic, would be tyrannical rule of what Aiden so viciously stereotypes as the criminal, vampire clergy. She has, however, utterly failed to come to solid grips with the principles and premise of how a worldview needs to rest on an inherently moral foundation, or it will never be able to soundly and on objective warrant introduce morality, due to the infamous IS-OUGHT gap. In short, she is trying to pull the warrant for morality in the Christian faith, down to the level of the radical relativism and inherent amorality of evolutionary materialism (which has functioned in this thread by way of being a tangential and polarising matter distractive from the indefensible incivility of Aiden). She full well knows or should know, that the foundational premise of an inherently good and loving creator God is a premise that would support the existence of morality as a binding and reasonable ought, so that there is no division between God and goodness, despite what the modern attempt to resurrect the Euthyphro dilemma, so-called, would try to conclude. At no time has she seriously responded to, say the key observation on the implication of our being jointly made in the image of God, as cited from "the judicious [Anglican Canon Richard] Hooker" by Locke in his 2nd essay on civil govt, when in Ch 2 sect 5 he set out to ground liberty and justice in civil society:
. . . if I cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every man's hands, as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire which is undoubtedly in other men . . . my desire, therefore, to be loved of my equals in Nature, as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to themward fully the like affection. From which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn for direction of life no man is ignorant . . . [[Hooker then continues, citing Aristotle in The Nicomachean Ethics, Bk 8:] as namely, That because we would take no harm, we must therefore do none; That since we would not be in any thing extremely dealt with, we must ourselves avoid all extremity in our dealings; That from all violence and wrong we are utterly to abstain, with such-like . . . ] [[Eccl. Polity,preface, Bk I, "ch." 8, p.80]
We see here how our being made jointly in the image of the good God, grounds core morality. And of course, the birth, life, service, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus with 500 witnesses provides a historical anchor point for just that view of God, and for a high view of the scriptures that prophesied and explained the significance of messiah and his death and resurrection, centuries ahead of time. It is unsurprising that the writings of the apostles anointed by the outpoured Spirit, would then call us as individuals, communities and civilisations, to the path of goodness. A path that is REASONABLE, as Hooker shows. It is then no surprise at all, to see that those who have come to repentance from dead works and faith in Christ, by the millions across twenty centuries, have been personally transformed, and that this has been one of the most important forces for good in the world. This is abundantly and easily shown on record. But of course, above we see the usual zero concessions policy, that pretends or suggests that the Christian faith, message and adherents have been an unmitigated disaster in the annals of history; in this context, worthy of being smeared by plastering verbal filth across the gospel and worthy of characterising Christian clergy as blood-mongering vampires. Notice, in particular the ever so revealing repeated tip toeing around the highly important balanced observation of Bernard Lewis. Just above, we can also see where MF, who is trained in philosophy, gives a crucial, but predictably veiled concession:
In summary the point is that there have been many objective justifications for morality (!)ranging from Aristotle through Kant to J.S. Mill – none of these three are based on a deity, others are. But in the end there is no ultimate justification possible for choosing between the objective justifications (even the theist ones). Hume was right – in the end morality is based on our common human passions – you cannot logically derive an ought from an is . . .
This of course reflects MF's underlying materialism that demands that there be no baseline IS that transcends matter, energy, space, time and forces of chance and blind necessity. So, his assertion boils down to saying there is no worldview foundational IS that can ground OUGHT. So also, the "objective" systems he mentions are not grounded, on evo mat views. What is being systematically missed here is that there is in fact a well warranted view that does provide such a foundational IS that places us under the moral and reasonable government of OUGHT. This tends to sound "theoretical," until one asks: what is a RIGHT -- the foundation of democratic civil society. The best answer, more or less is like this: a right is a proper, binding expectation that others OUGHT to respect one's inherent human dignity. That is, my right implies your duty, to my life, liberty, property, reputation etc. And immediately, we see the significance of principles and precepts such as thou shalt do no murder, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not slander, thou shalt judge fairly etc. As well, as the core Judaeo-Christian premise that we are jointly made in the image of God. We can also see that when one turns his or her back on the worldview-level warrant for such an understanding of our world and ourselves, s/he then ends up in worldviews that have no foundational IS that can objectively ground OUGHT. Thence, we end up in all the wranglings and chaos implied by where that ends: might and manipulation make 'right' -- just as Plato warned us against, 2350 years ago. Let me therefore cite him, again, from The Laws Bk X, as we plainly need to hear and heed his warning again:
[[The avant garde philosophers, teachers and artists c. 400 BC] say that the greatest and fairest things are the work of nature and of chance, the lesser of art [[ i.e. techne], which, receiving from nature the greater and primeval creations, moulds and fashions all those lesser works which are generally termed artificial . . . They say that fire and water, and earth and air [[i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as to the bodies which come next in order-earth, and sun, and moon, and stars-they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them-of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only . . . . [[T]hese people would say that the Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.- [[Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT. (Cf. here for Locke's views and sources on a very different base for grounding liberty as opposed to license and resulting anarchistic "every man does what is right in his own eyes" chaos leading to tyranny.)] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might [[ Evolutionary materialism leads to the promotion of amorality], and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [[Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality "naturally" leads to continual contentions and power struggles; cf. dramatisation here], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others [[such amoral factions, if they gain power, "naturally" tend towards ruthless tyranny; here, too, Plato hints at the career of Alcibiades], and not in legal subjection to them . . .
Notice, how for many months now, there has been no cogent answer to these concerns and warnings from the evolutionary materialist side. That should tell us a lot. Let us then look back on the thread above, and see it through the light of this warning. GEM of TKI PS: above, I have studiously avoided the further atmosphere poisoning games surrounding one of the latest waves of politically correct manipulation of our moral sensibilities. The thread was just plain poisonously distracted enough. For those needing to hear what the promoters of homosexualism -- yes, I am saying that we are again dealing with ideological agendas -- are not telling us, I suggest here as a useful beginning. (It would be wise to work through at least chapter one before making any strong conclusions, pro or con.)kairosfocus_{February 5, 2012
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Your accusation is false. That makes you a liar, a hypocrite and an embarrassment to Uncommon Descent.
Well KF seems to be building up quite a record for lies and false accusations (all preserved on this site), unfortunately I suspect it will just result in EL, champ, myself and others being banned - as happened recently to DrBot after KF's false accusations and refusal to retract - leaving the field clear for KF to continue preaching his religiously motivated hatred, fear and intolerance in the name of Intelligent Design and Christianity. Sad, very sad.GCUGreyArea_{February 5, 2012
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