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Is a Modern Myth of the Metals the Answer?

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In the post below Andrew Sibley links to an extraordinary article in The Times about the link between Darwinism and the recent spate of school shootings, and in the comments Leviathan steps up to give us the obligatory “this doesn’t disprove Darwinism” response. 

Leviathan, you are missing the point.  I read the article and there is not one word in it that attacks Darwinism per se.  For all you or I know the author could be a Darwinian fundamentalist.  I take it that the point of the article is that some school shooters are influenced by Darwinian theory.  That is undeniable. 

Actually, I take that back.  I am sure there are Darwinian fundamentalists out there who would deny that any school shooter has ever been influenced by Darwinism, but that just goes to show that Darwinian fundamentalists will deny propositions they know to be true.  I should say that the proposition cannot be denied in good faith. 

The author obviously wants his readers to consider not the validity of the theory itself but the implications the theory has for ethics.  When we teach our children that their existence is an ultimately meaningless accident and that morals are arbitrary byproducts of random genetic fluctuations and mechanical necessity, should we be surprised that they place a lower value on human life than someone who is taught that all humans have inherent dignity and worth because they are made in the image of God?

What to do?  What to do?  In considering this question, I am reminded of Plato’s “noble lie.”  In The Republic Plato proposed a special class of guardians trained from infancy to rule over the other classes.  But how do we persuade the guardians to rule for the common good instead of using their power to advance their personal ambitions?  Plato comes up with the “noble lie,” specifically the myth of the metals.  The answer, Plato says, is to make the guardians believe the gods have mixed a particular type of metal with the souls of the members of the different classes of society.  While common people have bronze or iron mixed with their soul, the guardians have gold mixed with theirs.  And here is the kicker:  The guardians are to be taught that they must never acquire wealth for themselves, because the gods frown at mixing earthly gold with spiritual gold.  Talk about chasing your tail.  Plato proposes a system in which the city spends years training the guardians in all the knowledge and wisdom they have, all the while making sure that at the end of the process they are still dumb enough to believe the myth of the metals. 

There are three and only three options. 

1.  We can continue to fill our children’s heads with standard Darwinian theory (which Dennett rightly calls “universal acid”), understanding that at least some of them are going to put two and two together and realize that the acid has eaten through all ethical principles — and act accordingly.

2.  We can try to come up with a secular noble lie.  “OK kids.  You might have noticed that one of the implications of what I just taught you is that your lives are ultimately meaningless and all morals are arbitrary, but you must never act as if that is true because [fill in the noble lie of your choice, such as “morality is firmly grounded on societal norms or our ability to empathize with others”].

3.  We can teach our children the truth – that the universe reveals a wondrous ordered complexity that can only be accounted for by the existence of a super-intelligence acting purposefully.  And one of the implications of that conclusion is that God exists, and, reasoning further, He has established an objective system of morality that binds us all, and therefore the moral imperatives you feel so strongly are not just an epiphenomenon of the electro-chemical states of your brain.

Looking around I see that for the last several decades we have tried options one and two, and we have gotten what we have gotten.  I vote to give option three a run.

Comments
Finally, and even more of a stumper for me, if one cannot derive an ought from an is and what is is all there is, then how can an ought be derived at all?
I do think we derive ought from is, even in biology. Consider pathology or any other practice that judges something is not functioning as it ought to.Mung
November 17, 2009
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Allen_MacNeill, you have been critical of "creationist ID blogs". One such charge can be found of your blog: "However, other misrepresentations are apparently part of a deliberate and ongoing effort to distort the public record and deliberately misrepresent the relevant scientific information for political and religious purposes." Etc. http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-i-post-comments-on-creationist-and.html You have brought up Huxley's Evolution and Ethics, and it is in this context that I will lob the charge back at you. I will use the Preface by Michael Ruse to his new edition of Huxley's Evolution and Ethics. (Princeton 2009) This preface is worth reading, because Ruse explains in it quite well what actually happened. The bottom line is that T.H. Huxley, Darwin's Bulldog, or the Pope Huxley, was not only indifferent to ideas of Darwin (p xii), but Huxley knew very well that "evolution had little basis in fact and, more than this, was a sloppy notion..." (p. xi) Ruse points out this conundrum, and explains that Huxley was trying to move away from the prevalent Spencerian notion & attitude which actually did create a Darwinian morality, a "moral message of evolution" (p. xvii), which was based on the Darwinian struggle in the animal & plant kingdom, based on some "animal force" that leads to greed and violence. This was scientism, or pseudo-science, plain & simple. Whether Huxley knew what he was doing, i.e. his hypocrisy and his deliberate intention to create an evolutionary "Secular religion" (as Ruse calls, it p. xiii) to help the poor working masses, is perhaps open to debate. But the fact is that since his first famous lecture on Darwinism, when Huxley was so cold and shunning of Darwin's pigeons, with his further program of discrediting Owen, his X-Club, etc., it is quite clear that Huxley knew quite well what the problems were and that Darwinism was just a useful tool to bring about the education & betterment of the masses. (One could seek parallels to this in the current US political situation.) Anyway, in this final essay, Huxley did try to dissociate himself from the Darwinian morality, he wanted to dismiss such "evolutionary ethicizing", and many, like G.E. Moore with his Principia Ethica welcomed such a departure. Huxley tried his best to explain the nature of ethics, but there was a mixed reaction and many were not impressed by Huxley's own ethicizing. But, what is really interesting in this essay, is that Huxley did realize that there was a "beast within us" which needs to be fought and cultured. This sounds very much like the "original sin", which is the central idea of Christianity. In his essay Huxley also pointed out that there was another aspect of this cosmic evolution, a kind of an anthropic principle, art (which needs an artificer), with perhaps even a hint of design: "But there is another aspect of the cosmic process, so perfect as a mechanism, so beautiful as a work of art. Where the cosmopoietic energy works [51] through sentient beings, there arises, among its other manifestations, that which we call pain or suffering. This baleful product of evolution increases in quantity and in intensity, with advancing grades of animal organization, until it attains its highest level in man." Unfortunately, as Ruse pointed out, the evolutionary or Darwinian morality came back despite Huxley's effort to thwart it. Many, including Huxley's own grandson Julian embraced it. This morality made inroads even into the Catholic Church via the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin, to whose Phenomenon of Man Julian Huxley wrote and enthusiastic introduction.rockyr
November 17, 2009
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Allen_MacNeill, You say that there is no such thing as Darwinian morality, and, in a way, you are right. However, there is such a thing as the lack of morality, and that is the key problem of our Post-Christian Post-Rationalist society. In this moral vacuum, where morally immature and uneducated individuals, (sometimes unkindly called moral imbeciles), are easily influenced by anything they fancy right, the predominant Darwinian or "scientific" world-view has had a huge impact. You can see it everywhere from the Darwinian economics, politics, sociology, to interpersonal relations. No wonder some or many of these immature individuals adopt Darwinian "survival of the fittest" notions as their personal ethics. With respect to the nature of ethics, you are muddying the waters. True, as the history of ethics shows, it has always been the trickiest area of human reasoning. Its essence is the proper and intelligent understanding of what is "good" or "truth". But that is why one must sincerely and humbly learn, reason and ponder the ethical foundations, the history of ethics, and what each of the sages has said or done. Referring to G.E. Moore, as sincere and honest philosopher he was, is simply an oversimplification of the problem, since Moore was a common sense ethical intuitionist. There is nothing wrong with such an approach, providing one's intuition is right. However, if it isn't, one, and the whole society, is in huge trouble. That is why even an intelligent and educated person will humbly take advice and guidance of prestigious social institutions, of which Christianity is the foremost. (Example: I watched the Glenn Beck town hall meeting program with black African-Americans a few days ago and it was good and eye-opening to see that many black Americans consider Christianity the key to their emancipation and human dignity.)rockyr
November 17, 2009
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How is that going to help me further my genes? Darwinism would show Genghis Khan to be the benchmark of morality :-)tribune7
November 17, 2009
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Oh, and did you see post #114? There are a lot of unanswered questions in there.Phinehas
November 17, 2009
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Allen_MacNeill:
You have defined God in such a way as to eliminate the contradictions inherent in the dilemma, but provided absolutely no evidence whatsoever for the validity of your semantic definition. Ergo, why should anyone believe it, much less conform their behavior to it?
You presented the dilemma as if it were unavoidable. I demonstrated that it wasn't.
If the only thing validating the standard is one’s belief in the entity asserting it, then disbelief in that entity (and/or refusal to accept that standard) invalidate the standard.
It is not belief in the standard that makes it valid. If God exists and has established a standard, then no ammount of disbelief can invalidate it. If God does not exist, then the standard is already invalidated no matter how many believe. The notion that belief alone can validate a standard is misguided as well as tellingly anthropocentric.
In other words, anyone can go on asserting that God exists and provides the ultimate justification for moral/ethical prescriptions, but this does nothing to validate nor falsify such assertions.
OK. If you believe God will judge, then you will act in accordance with that belief. If you don't, you won't. But God will judge (or not) despite your beliefs. On the other hand, if there is no Judge, there can be no Justice.
According to the most basic principle of deontology, ethical/moral principles should be universalizable, or as Kant asserted, one should “act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
How is that going to help me further my genes? Why should I not be an exception to universal laws, especially since they are counterproductive to the furthering of my genes? When I'm looking at things from a "what's in it for me" perspective (and why shouldn't I?), it appears that the Prisoner's Dilemma would have Kant for lunch.
Teleological ethical/moral prescriptions, by contrast, are ultimately justified by their effects. The most common teleological ethical/moral system is utilitarianism, according to which one should do whatever acts result in the “greatest good for the greatest number”.
Why should I care about the greatest good for the greatest number? Not that I'm necessarily opposed to the notion, but what happens when it countermands what is best for me? Should I continue to pursue a fitness of zero and let my genes pass out of existence just because, in general, it is better for families to stay together? Why? Why should I care about the general good over my own particular good? So, the human race continues, but my genes are no longer part of it. Why should I want that?Phinehas
November 17, 2009
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Allen @118
But then it is simply our assertion that God exists that validates our morals, and not the actual existence of God, which has been neither validated nor falsified by this exercise in circular rationalization.
I think it is less the assertion that God exists that validates our morals, but rather that a being exists that has no need of morals, and our morals validate both that we ought to be like this being, and also that we are not. I don't think I've spoken the essence of what I am trying to get across as eloquently as I might have, but I can hope that perhaps the nugget that I am trying to communicate is in there somewhere. To put it another way, I think our understanding of morality is deficient, or that we aer arguing about the wrong thing. It's not what justifies our morals, but why are the even necessary. What purpose do they serve? No moral can make a man do what is right. So it really is irrelevant, isn't it, from whence that moral proceeds, at least in the sense of trying to validate it. Man ought/b> have no need of morals.Mung
November 17, 2009
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Allen,
What makes an “ultimate standard” an ultimate standard? Is it the fact that someone asserted it, or that it doesn’t contain any contradictions in its underlying logic, or that it has generally beneficial effects?
The fact that it is true. Two and two do not make five, they make four, that is objective truth. "I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent behaviour known to all men is unsound, because different civilizations and different ages have had quite different moralities. But this is not true. There have been differences between their moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like total difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own. Some of the evidence for this I have put together in the appendix of another book called 'The Abolition of Man'; but for our present purpose I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to - whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or every one. but they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked. But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter; but then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong - in other words, if there is no Law of Nature - what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else? It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong..." C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.Clive Hayden
November 16, 2009
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---Allen MacNeill: "In comment 102 stephenB chose “teleology” as the source of the justification for ethical prescriptions. This clearly indicates that stephenB prefers ethics that are ultimately justified by their effects over ethics that are justified by their source (e.g. a deity) or their internal logical consistency." You will recall that I stated ethics are grounded in human nature, and that an ethical person, or a moral person, is one who acts according to his nature. ---"In other words, for an ethical prescription to be valid, it doesn’t matter who formulated the prescription and it doesn’t matter if it makes internal logical sense, it only matters that it brings about a desired end state." On the contrary, I didn't say that the source of ethics doesn't matter. If humans were designed to be with God in the hereafter, then it is in accordance with their nature to follow that destiny. If they were not designed for a purpose, then it doesn't much matter what they do since there is no purpose or destiny to be frustrated or any human nature to be violated. ---"Such ethical systems are known as teleological ethics because they are ultimately justified by their intended “end” (”telos” in Greek). The most widely accepted version of teleological ethics is utilitarianism, in which all ethical prescriptions are justified if they bring about “the greatest good of the greatest number”. I have no objection if you want to place utilitarianism under the broad rubric of teleology, however, the emphasis of my teleology is on "virtue ethics," as opposed to pragmatic ethics. They are different enough to merit separate discussions. ---"Tell me, stephenB, do you agree with this? And if not, which version of teleological ethics would you like to adopt? Or would you now like to change your answer to the question I asked in comment #94?" In effect, you are placing Jeremy Bentham and Aristotle in the same category, which is quite a stretch. More to the point, I agree with some elements of deontology, teleology, and "virtue theory," with the emphasis on the latter since it transcends singular individual actions and focuses on habits and character, which is really the determining standard in deciding a good person from a bad person. Remember, my original point. A good person is one who acts accocrding to his nature and who persues his proper destiny. However, a good person should also strive to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people, if he can do so without violating some objective moral principle. Further, ethics becomes more challenging when one transcends, without bypassing, the morality of virtuous action and graduates to the morality of intention, that is, when he begins to consider his own motives--when he strives to know why he is doing what he is doing--when he examines his conscience about his real motives, the kinds of motives when, unchecked can trnasform a good act into a bad act. All these considerations are signs that such a person is growing in virtue. Deontology and utilitarianism do not really approach the subject of growth of personal character and are, therefore, imcomplete. To be sure, It matters what one does, and what the consequences of that act may be, but it matters even more, what one becomes in the process and what he makes other people become, which gets back to consequences. It is not an either/or proposition.StephenB
November 16, 2009
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Allen, "“Knowing God, I do not believe that he is vengeful or wrathful or has set up a hopeless universe for any souls.” But it was me who said that, and it isn't a belief, but what I know. I do realize of course that it isn't something easily provable, since it is experiential. I'm not sure how it relates to your argument with Phinehas.avocationist
November 16, 2009
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Which brings us back around to the other two forms of justification for ethical/moral prescriptions: deontology and teleology. The former assumes that any valid ethical/moral prescription must not (indeed, cannot) prescribe something that is self-contradictory. For example, one cannot assert that cheating, lying, murdering, and stealing are okay when I do them to someone else, but not okay when someone does them to me. According to the most basic principle of deontology, ethical/moral principles should be universalizable, or as Kant asserted, one should "act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Teleological ethical/moral prescriptions, by contrast, are ultimately justified by their effects. The most common teleological ethical/moral system is utilitarianism, according to which one should do whatever acts result in the "greatest good for the greatest number". There are other teleological ethical/moral systems, all of which could collectively be referred to as consequencialist ethics/morals. That is, they rely for their justification/validation upon the consequences of the acts prescribed. There have also been attempts to synthesize the two systems, producing what would amount to ethical/moral prescriptions that are justified by their consequences, while at the same time being universalizable and involving no logical self-contradictions. The "neo-Kantian" ethics of John Rawl's A Theory of Justice is an example of such a synthetic ethics. Rawls asserted that Kantian principles of "universal justice" are in fact validated by the empirical fact that they tend to bring about the "greatest good of the greatest number", and are therefore both deontologically and teleologically justified and validated. Notice, of course, that neither of these extremely widespread ethical/moral systems requires the existence of a supernatural entity Who asserts ethical/moral prescriptions (nor do they necessarily undermine the existence of such an entity). So much for Dostoyevsky...Allen_MacNeill
November 16, 2009
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Re comment #116: All you have done here is to "escape" from the Euthyphro Dilemma by a purely semantic operation, a "trick" if you will. You have defined God in such a way as to eliminate the contradictions inherent in the dilemma, but provided absolutely no evidence whatsoever for the validity of your semantic definition. Ergo, why should anyone believe it, much less conform their behavior to it? Or, to ask this another way, you assert that
"Knowing God, I do not believe that he is vengeful or wrathful or has set up a hopeless universe for any souls."
And indeed, this may be the case for you, but there is no way that this can be generalized to anyone else who does not accept the same premises. It is a generally accepted principle in philosophical ethics that the justification for an ethical prescription should not depend for its validity upon an individual's personal beliefs, but rather should be validated (i.e. justified) by some generally accepted (preferably universal) standard. You may argue that God provides such a standard, but as Abraham Adel pointed out many years ago, what if someone either refuses to accept that standard, or simply does not believe in the existence of the God who supposedly sets the standard. Then what? If the only thing validating the standard is one's belief in the entity asserting it, then disbelief in that entity (and/or refusal to accept that standard) invalidate the standard. In other words, valid ethical prescriptions should be valid, regardless of whether one believes in the existence of the entity asserting them or agrees to accept their validity. Dostoevsky is famous for having one of his protagonists assert that "If God does not exist, then anything is permitted." This is a purely circular (i.e. tautological) argument, as it simply reduces to
God must exist, because if He doesn't we can't act morally. We believe we should act morally, and so we assert that God exists.
But then it is simply our assertion that God exists that validates our morals, and not the actual existence of God, which has been neither validated nor falsified by this exercise in circular rationalization. In other words, anyone can go on asserting that God exists and provides the ultimate justification for moral/ethical prescriptions, but this does nothing to validate nor falsify such assertions.Allen_MacNeill
November 16, 2009
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Is it possible to say that a person is the moral standard? If by that we mean that their example and behavior are the inspiration for us to copy, then that makes sense, but in response I would ask the very same questions that Bruce David asked in 101. Allanius tries to make a good case for a coherent Biblical God...not bad but no dice. It just isn't there. And if the sacredness of life is the standard, we have to ask why Jehovah was so gratuitously murderous. So this is what I'm getting at. Because people here are saying that belief in God gives a moral grounding, which it no doubt does, but I don't see an applicable Christian standard that works out very well. And Phinehas says that if I speak in terms of the God I believe in I am making God in my own image, but by accepting other people's concepts of God, you are letting them make the image of God for you. Henceforth, I will speak of the God that I know, for that is far more accurate. Knowing God, I do not believe that he is vengeful or wrathful or has set up a hopeless universe for any souls. If you think of the kindest, gentlest, most soft-hearted person that you know very, very well, and they were accused on circumstantial evidence of cruelly murdering someone, you would stand up for them and say, "I know they are not capable of that."avocationist
November 16, 2009
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Allen_MacNeill:
Clearly, there is nothing per se in the concept of a supernatural deity that makes it necessary for such an entity to be either moral or amoral. Indeed, if one accepts that a fundamental criterion of morality is that it involves a choice between two incommensurate alternatives, then an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient supernatural entity is amoral by definition, as such a deity cannot choose to do anything immoral.
G. E. Moore concluded that there was no way to put a verbal or written definition to the word "good" because it was already in its simplest form. I'd make the exact same argument, only about God and not good. As soon as you start trying to define God by using a standard such as "good" or "love," God becomes subject to the standard. But a God who is subject to a standard is no longer God. It is not God who is constrained to do good, but goodness that is constrained to be God-like. All things are defined in terms of God, not the other way around. The fallacy of trying to define God in terms of external standards leads inevitably to:
To sum up, any omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient supernatural entity lacks the option of making any form of moral choice, and therefore must be amoral, by definition. And therefore, what justifies any such entity’s moral/ethical prescriptions is the moral/ethical quality of those prescriptions, and not the entity asserting them.
The Euthyphro Dilemma has not been left unanswered.
At this point we must remind ourselves that Christian theology does not believe God to be a person. It believes Him to be such that in Him a trinity of persons is consistent with a unity of Deity. In that sense it believes Him to be something very different from a person, just as a cube, in which six squares are consistent with unity of the body, is different from a square. (Flatlanders, attempting to imagine a cube, would either imagine the six squares coinciding, and thus destroy their distinctness, or else imagine them set out side by side, and thus destroy the unity. Our difficulties about the Trinity are of much the same kind.) It is therefore possible that the duality which seems to force itself upon us when we think, first, of our Father in Heaven, and, secondly, of the self-evident imperatives of the moral law, is not a mere error but a real (though inadequate and creaturely) perception of things that would necessarily be two in any mode of being which enters our experience, but which are not so divided in the absolute being of the superpersonal God. When we attempt to think of a person and a law, we are compelled to think of this person either as obeying the law or as making it. And when we think of Him as making it we are compelled to think of Him either as making it in conformity to some yet more ultimate pattern of goodness (in which case that pattern, and not He, would be supreme) or else as making it arbitrarily by a sic volo, sic jubeo (in which case He would be neither good nor wise). But it is probably just here that our categories betray us. It would be idle, with our merely mortal resources, to attempt a positive correction of our categories - ambulavi in mirabilibus supra me. But it might be permissible to lay down two negations: that God neither obeys nor creates the moral law. The good is uncreated; it never could have been otherwise; it has in it no shadow of contingency; it lies, as Plato said, on the other side of existence. It is the Rita of the Hindus by which the gods themselves are divine, the Tao of the Chinese from which all realities proceed. But we, favoured beyond the wisest pagans, know what lies beyond existence, what admits no contingency, what lends divinity to all else, what is the ground of all existence, is not simply a law but also a begetting love, a love begotten, and the love which, being these two, is also imminent in all those who are caught up to share the unity of their self-caused life. God is not merely good, but goodness; goodness is not merely divine, but God. --C. S. Lewis
Phinehas
November 16, 2009
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err...Deontology even.Phinehas
November 16, 2009
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Allen_MacNeill:
There is no such thing as “Darwinian morality”.
First, how can this be? Is morality more than biology? Is compassion more than biology? More than the chemistry inside my brain? In what way? And were these chemical patterns not selected for their significance to my survival by Darwinian processes? How else to explain their origin? Second, does your answer mean I should stay with my wife and child? On what can I ground choosing to do so over furthering my genes? Deneology? What is logically inconsistent about choosing to further my genes? Teleology? If the desired consequences are to further my genes (and why wouldn't they be?), then leaving my wife and child has the best chance of bringing this about. I mean, I could just cheat on my wife, but then I might not be able to be as intimately involved in continuing to ensure that my gene-carriers are protected and promoted. Finally, and even more of a stumper for me, if one cannot derive an ought from an is and what is is all there is, then how can an ought be derived at all?Phinehas
November 16, 2009
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Bruce David:
So my question to you is if you really believe that all the standards are summed up in “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself,” are you simply ignoring all the questions I just raised, or can you somehow derive them from that simple statement?
Yes, I really believe all the standards are summed up in that statement. I also believe that all the standards are summed up in the person of Christ. He is the only One ever to have fully met the standard of love, which should not be surprising as He defines love. The rest of us fall short of the standard. Some people can swim better than others, but none of us can walk on water. Your questions about the practical details is not unimportant, but I see them as a step beyond the standard. Is a standard not a standard if it doesn't tell you everything you need to know to meet it? The standard for me in my marriage is that I love my wife. As you point out, however, having the proper motive isn't enough. How best to love my wife is still a subject needing much consideration. What is her love language? What communicates love to her? What are her particular needs? Who is she at her core? Where does she feel vulnerable? Can I accept her exactly like she is? These are questions worthy of a lifetime of pursuit, but I need not have answered all of them to know that the overall standard is to motivated by love in all my actions toward her. To get to the bottom of these questions, however, it is important that I have a committed relationship with her in which we are communicating openly with each other. How else could I know? I am confident that if people are willing to commit to a relationship with God in which they are open to understanding who He is and what loving Him entails, they will find the answers they seek or perhaps discover they are asking the wrong questions. Instead, people often have a tendency to talk about the "God I believe in," which ends up as an exercise in creating God in our own image, if not with our hands, then with our minds.Phinehas
November 16, 2009
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Or, asked another way, is a person who chooses to do good (and chooses not to do evil) because doing good is the right thing to do, and not because God says so (because, for example, s/he has never heard of God) therefore condemned to everlasting torment in Hell? I ask because I was once nearly beaten with an umbrella by a devout Christian who became violently angry when I asked this question.Allen_MacNeill
November 16, 2009
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Now, let me pose a question: Can a person who either has not ever heard of the Abrahamic deity or who does not believe in the existence of this entity nevertheless both act and think morally/ethically? If not, why not, and if so, why so?Allen_MacNeill
November 16, 2009
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In comment #103 Mung asked:
"If there is a God, could that God be a-moral?"
Clearly, there is nothing per se in the concept of a supernatural deity that makes it necessary for such an entity to be either moral or amoral. Indeed, if one accepts that a fundamental criterion of morality is that it involves a choice between two incommensurate alternatives, then an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient supernatural entity is amoral by definition, as such a deity cannot choose to do anything immoral. Such an entity is, in other words, entirely constrained to do good, and cannot therefore be considered to be either moral or supernatural (i.e. unconstrained in its actions) by any rational definition of that term. Furthermore, if such an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient supernatural entity is constrained to only do good, then the source of such "goodness" cannot be the result of any kind of rational choice on the part of that entity. Therefore, the source of such "goodness" must come from outside the purview of such an entity; otherwise why could that entity not choose to do otherwise? To sum up, any omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient supernatural entity lacks the option of making any form of moral choice, and therefore must be amoral, by definition. And therefore, what justifies any such entity's moral/ethical prescriptions is the moral/ethical quality of those prescriptions, and not the entity asserting them. See why it's called the Euthyphro Dilemma? Like all classical logical paradoxes, it has no logical/rational solution and can only be escaped from by irrationally choosing one or the other horn of the dilemma and pretending the other horn therefore goes away as the result of such choice (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma ). BTW, the anthropological record contains a myriad of Gods, only a very few of which could be considered either "good" or "moral" by western standards. So, if Mung is asking whether any God can be amoral, the answer is clearly "yes" — indeed, most of them are (including some of the versions of God in the Old Testament/Tanakh).Allen_MacNeill
November 16, 2009
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Let me state my question again, in slightly reworded form: Are ethical prescriptions ultimately justified by • Theology: their source (i.e. who asserted them), • Deontology: their internal logical consistency (i.e. whether they are not self-contradictory), or • Teleology: their effects (i.e. whether they bring about the desired consequences)?Allen_MacNeill
November 16, 2009
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In comment 102 stephenB chose "teleology" as the source of the justification for ethical prescriptions. This clearly indicates that stephenB prefers ethics that are ultimately justified by their effects over ethics that are justified by their source (e.g. a deity) or their internal logical consistency. In other words, for an ethical prescription to be valid, it doesn't matter who formulated the prescription and it doesn't matter if it makes internal logical sense, it only matters that it brings about a desired end state. Such ethical systems are known as teleological ethics because they are ultimately justified by their intended "end" ("telos" in Greek). The most widely accepted version of teleological ethics is utilitarianism, in which all ethical prescriptions are justified if they bring about "the greatest good of the greatest number". Tell me, stephenB, do you agree with this? And if not, which version of teleological ethics would you like to adopt? Or would you now like to change your answer to the question I asked in comment #94?Allen_MacNeill
November 16, 2009
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Allen queries: “What makes an ‘ultimate standard’ an ultimate standard? Is it the fact that someone asserted it, or that it doesn’t contain any contradictions in its underlying logic, or that it has generally beneficial effects?” All three! The “ulitmate standard” of value in the Bible is human life. First, the Bible asserts that life is sacred. God formed man from the dust of the earth and breathed into him breath (spirit) of life. The fall of man is clearly described as the result of choosing the knowledge of good and evil over life. According to Ecclesiates, “God has put eternity into the hearts of men”; the source of our unhappiness is our consciousness of the value of life and our own mortality. John says this about Christ: “In him was life, and this life was the light of men.” And Christ obtains his exalted status by restoring life to men. Second, there no contradiction in the Bible on this point. Life is identified as the ultimate standard of value from Genesis to the Revelation. The purpose of the commandment “love your neighbor as yourself” is to preserve and build up life, and therefore all of the law and the prophets also depend upon this value. Why do the prophets describe God as being full of wrath and destruction if “God is love”? God's wrath is engendered by apostasy, which cuts man off from the source of life; by mistreatment of the poor and the powerless; and, interestingly, by the arrogance of self-promoting religion. Christ said, “Love your enemies as yourself; do good to those who persecute you.” Since the Bible describes Christ as God in the flesh, the Old Testament jihads that seem so troubling to Dawkinsharrismyers are based on an imperfect understanding of God. The Israelites thought they could make themselves holy and create Jerusalem by annihilating the temptation offered by their pagan neighbors. The abject failure of their violent experiment in self-justification shows that Jerusalem can only come from mercy, not judgment. “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” Finally, the equation of life with light in the Bible has highly beneficial effects. It teaches us to revere God, who is the Lord and giver of life, and to walk in the light, which is the only way to obtain peace and true prosperity. It teaches us to be completely humble and gentle and to consider others to be of more importance than ourselves. It teaches us to preserve life by refraining from murder, theft, adultery, false witness and covetousness.allanius
November 16, 2009
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In comment #99 Phinehas asked:
"Darwinian morality is just so confusing for me. Can someone give me a hand here?"
I'd be happy to: There is no such thing as "Darwinian morality". By this is I do not mean that "Darwinists" are inherently immoral. On the contrary, I mean that on cannot derive ethical prescriptions (i.e. statements of what "is" the case) from scientific observations and inferences (i.e. statements of what "ought" to be the case). This was clearly pointed out as early as 1893 by Thomas Henry Huxley (aka "Darwin's Bulldog"), who wrote
"Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating [evolution by natural selection], still less in running away from it, but in combating it." [Huxley, T. H. (1893) Evolution and Ethics, http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE9/E-E.html emphasis added]
Every reputable ethicist since G. E. Moore has asserted (on purely logical/rational grounds) that there is no necessary connection whatsoever between science (including evolutionary biology) and the formulation and justification for ethical/moral prescriptions. Indeed, attempting to formulate such linkages is to commit what is commonly known as the "naturalistic fallacy" and is completely illegitimate. In other words, when people like Clive Hayden and stephenB accuse evolutionary biologists of basing moral judgments on naturalistic principles, when evolutionary biologists such as myself point out that doing so is logically and ethically fallacious, then the people committing the "naturalistic fallacy" are those making the accusations, not the evolutionary biologists. This is known as a "straw man argument" and is itself logically fallacious (and morally pernicious, when done intentionally).Allen_MacNeill
November 16, 2009
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That isn’t quite what I meant. I meant, what precisely is the moral standard? How does it govern one’s actions?
That's the problem when discussing these issues. The moral standard is Christ. 1 Corinthians 1:25-31 1:25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 1:26 For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, [are called]. 1:27 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; 1:28 and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, 1:29 that no flesh should glory in His presence. 1:30 But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God--and righteousness and sanctification and redemption-- 1:31 that, as it is written, "He who glories, let him glory in the LORD."ellijacket
November 16, 2009
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mikev6 @ #62
The need to reconcile a benevolent God with the obvious evil around us is your problem, not mine. I don’t believe in a benevolent God.
Yet you believe in "the obvious evil around us." Whence does such a belief arise? From where does the lack of belief in "a benevolent God" arise? And yes, this is your problem. Certainly it is not our responsibility to disabuse you of your belief in things which you do not believe in!Mung
November 15, 2009
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Allen @ #94
So, which is it — are ethical moral codes justified by theology, deontology, or teleology, or merely by assertion?
Belief in objective morality is justified through philosophy alone. If there is a God, could that God be a-moral?Mung
November 15, 2009
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---Allen MacNeil: "So, which is it — are ethical moral codes justified by theology, deontology, or teleology, or merely by assertion?" Choose answer C. Morality is a function of goodness. So, the question is, what is a good person? Well, what is a “good” anything? If something is good, it operates the way of was designed and intended to perform. What is a good can-opener? It is one that opens cans efficiently and easily. What is a good pencil? It is one that writes well. Can a pencil be a good can opener? No, and if it tries, not only will it fail to open the can, it will also destroy itself in the process. What is a good person? A good person is one who lives appropriately or according to his own created nature. Since God made both the person and his corresponding nature, only God can establish the appropriate morality that will bring them into harmony. The consequences of any act matter, but only God knows all the combinations of permutations involved, and is, therefore, the only one who can pass final judgment on how much good or harm each act actually produces. More important, only God knows the intent behind the act. What a man does is important, but why he does it is far more important. Indeed, he can pervert his own nature by doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Among all earthly creatures, only man has the power to resist his created purpose and pervert his own nature. When he does so, he ends up just like a pencil who tries to become a can opener. By trying to be something he is not, namely God, he not only fails to become human, he becomes subhuman and destroys himself [and others] in the process. Consequently, if there is no such thing as human nature and purpose, there can be no such thing as goodness or morality.StephenB
November 15, 2009
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Phinehas said (#100): "On the other hand, if you really want it written out, all the standards are summed up in this: Love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. How do we know this to be the standard? Because the One who judges and justifies said so. How do we know He has the authority? Because He rose from the dead." First, whereas this might be good advice, it really isn't a moral standard. Moral standards tell us what to do and what not to do in given circumstances. Loving is not something you do, at least not in the sense that one can decide to love someone, the way one can decide to give help to someone in need or refrain from sexual activity. I do agree, however, that loving God and loving one's neighbor as oneself are very fine goals to strive for (although notice that one must love oneself first before loving one's neighbor as oneself can have any kind of positive impact). These admonitions can be translated into an actionable standard, however, which is, in every circumstance, answer the question "What would Love do now?" Then do that. Second, what about all the other moral standards that exist throughout Christianity and all the other religions as well? What about homosexuality? What about diet? What about dress codes for females? What about sex? What about abortion? What about masturbation? What constitutes proper worship? What about gender roles or divorce or tithing or one's obligations to the community or what constitutes proper activity between unmarried people of opposite sexes? Every religion has something to say on most or all of these topics (and many more that I can't think of right now), and many of them assert that their standards are absolute moral imperatives, even to the point that they often insist that everyone abide by them whether they are members of their faith or not. So my question to you is if you really believe that all the standards are summed up in "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself," are you simply ignoring all the questions I just raised, or can you somehow derive them from that simple statement?Bruce David
November 15, 2009
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avocationist:
That isn’t quite what I meant. I meant, what precisely is the moral standard? How does it govern one’s actions?
As ellijacket points out, the moral standard is a Person, not a list of some sort. This Personis the One who judges as well as the One who justifies. We will all give account of our actions to this Person, and we all depend on this Person's forgiveness for our own righteousness. Live like that. On the other hand, if you really want it written out, all the standards are summed up in this: Love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. How do we know this to be the standard? Because the One who judges and justifies said so. How do we know He has the authority? Because He rose from the dead.Phinehas
November 15, 2009
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