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.

“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......t-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.

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.)

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?

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.

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.

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.

““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.