From what I have seen that they have captured on tape, this movie is gold.

Transcendent moral standard are not set by Judges. However neither are they set by scientists. Or filmmakers. Perhaps this gold is becoming ever so slightly tarnished? Could it be a different type of gold altogether even?

And then they set up the HD cameras?

From what I have seen that they have captured on tape, this movie is gold.

All things that exist within the
spatio-temporal realm, exist within a natural context even before man attempts to define them. So, I’ll flip it around and ask would an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent deity not be capable of using a methodology to create and alter life his simple subjects have yet to comprehend in their incredibly short amount of time here on earth?

Yeah, you should always think 2 steps ahead when you argue.

Most mature adults wouldn’t be so pretentious as to think morality is that black and white.
You must not have lived through much…

“This whole line of argument – that ID necessarily contains within it both an absolute committment to the basic tenets of Judeo-Christian-Muslim_Mormon religion,”

What a completely meaningless, propagandist load that is.

The basic tenets of christianity have changed so much by culture and context, that there are NO basic tenets of christianity.

Infact if you took the time to name some “Fundamental” values I am certain I could name a significant church at some point in time, who has gone the completely opposite direction of said tenet.

It’s funny you mention mormonism, which at one time condoned incest and christianity, which last time I read the new testament the apostle Paul spoke against.

Same with muslim families who also engage in incestuous marriages.

Islamic fundamentalism sure sounds different to me…
But please continue to enlighten me on how the western churches warped view reflects that of the original middle eastern author’s.

Especially when the trinity(a fundamental tenet of christianity) was called blasphemous by St. Augustine(who founded many of the fundemental values the modern church follows)

There are no fundemental tenets, just people who look at the surface and no further.

I find it highly hypocritical that you would get mad at people attempting to generalize morality, but then act as though it’s ok to generalize anybody who thinks an intelligible force contributed to either life or the system that supports it as a fundamentalist christian.

We are on the brink of creating the first synthetic microbe, it is not an opinion to state ID is plausible, and it certainly does not require any particular interpretation of the Bible, Quran, tal mud or the book of mormon to see that.

Allen, Let me fine tune my comment in the context of your response. I submit that we can’t reason our way to morality unless there is someplace to go. If there is no destination (objective natural moral law) then there is no journey to be made. That is why I like your language and your apt use of just the right preposition. We can’t simply reason ABOUT it (subjective [make it up]) we must reason our way TO it (objective [discover it]).

If there is a transcendent moral standard

It seems to me that this concept is bandied about by many but few take the time to examine the details.

I know you like thought experements. So please indulge me. Imagine that you are locked in a box. You have no memory except of being in the box but can speak english (like all the aliens in startrek!). You are handed an axe and break out of the box – who hands you the axe? Who knows, it’s not important for now. When you break out of the box you see an island and lots of other people breaking out of boxes. You imagine that they all have axes too, and that they have no memory, like you.

How, in your opinion, does the universes transcendent moral standard become comminicated to this group of people? Are you feeling safe desipte all those axes out there in random peoples hands?

If there is a transcendent moral standard, then it needs an author.

It also needs a reader, and it needs to be able to be read to have a reader. What enables access to the transcendent moral standard?

That anyone has the capacity, at least in a relative sense, to adhere to a moral standard (more or less) in no way demonstrates that the moral standard doesn’t need an author.

Nor does it demonstrate that it does need an author.

What we said is that to believe in a transcendent moral standard and yet REJECT Intelligent Design is logically incoherent.

Why? And why would you need to believe in the TMStandard for it to take effect?

Perhaps alot of the trouble in the world is that everybody says to each other “I believe in a transcendent moral standard” and everybody nods and says “yes, me too, you are good people” but then when it comes to the crunch it turns out that everybody was working to a slightly different standard and the grand plans all fall.

There’s been plenty of research into how people react when faced with a moral dilemma

Recent work shows an important asymmetry in lay intuitions about moral dilemmas.
Most people think it is permissible to divert a train so that it will kill one innocent person
instead of five, but most people think that it is not permissible to push a stranger in front
of a train to save five innocents.

http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~.....lemmas.pdf

Mr Mac, why do you think that the TMS allows one and not the other (if that is the indeed effect at play here)? Care to speculate?

“This would certainly be news to [blah, blah, blah] ethical philosophers of the last three centuries all of whom both profess and try to adhere to a transcendent and absolute moral code.”

It’s not my fault if that was news to them. Standards need authors. Laws need lawmakers. That’s a no-brainer. If there is a transcendent moral standard, then it needs an author.

Allen_MacNeill wrote:

“Or are you asserting that only Christians can be moral?”

Why on Earth would I assert something so absurd? And why on Earth would you suggest that I might suggest something so absurd? That anyone has the capacity, at least in a relative sense, to adhere to a moral standard (more or less) in no way demonstrates that the moral standard doesn’t need an author.

Allen_MacNeill wrote:

“What both StephenB and TRoutMac assert is that, since nature has tied into it the logical bases for morality, we can “read” our morals directly from nature. People are “moral”, not because they have to reason their way to being such, but simply because morality is “natural”, just like gravity.”

Neither StephenB nor myself said anything REMOTELY akin to the above gibberish.

What we said is that to believe in a transcendent moral standard and yet REJECT Intelligent Design is logically incoherent.

How you got from that to that other junk about ‘reading morality in nature’ is beyond me.

“I think TRoutMac’s argument is a fair one. The idea of a “natural moral law,” observable, real, and detectable is completely consistent with the idea of a natural creative design, observable, real, and detectable. To reject design as real is to reject the natural moral law as real. The universe is either rational or it is not; purpose and morality are either built in to it or they are not.”

Not only does TroutMac’s argument fly in the face of three centuries of philosophical and religious tradition concerning the source of moral and ethical values, it is wholly in line with the logical fallacy that provided the underpinning of “social darwinism” and all of the evils that are supposed to have flowed from it.

What both StephenB and TRoutMac assert is that, since nature has tied into it the logical bases for morality, we can “read” our morals directly from nature. People are “moral”, not because they have to reason their way to being such, but simply because morality is “natural”, just like gravity.

It’s an interesting coincidence that this line of argument has come up, as my summer evolution seminar at Cornell this year will focus on precisely this question. The title of the course this year will be “Evolution and Ethics: Is Morality Natural?” My answer, which I believe is in line with nearly all of western moral and ethical philosophy of the past century, is NO. Morality doesn’t come to us “naturally”: we have to choose to be moral, on the basis of our experience and our moral values, which are not modeled on nature, which (as Alfred Lord Tennyson pointed out), is “red in tooth and claw.”