What is the appeal of "objective morality"

[The Big Dog]

If morality is not something that is part of the human evolutionary process and is not relative and subjective but instead is an objective reality then that entails that their sky daddy must be the one who set those "laws" outside of humanity and human nature.

In their warped illogical way of "reasoning", if morals did not emanate from human essence then it must come from some other essence which then they proceed to assign as their imaginary friend and more specifically their ill begotten son of a ghostly 1/3rd of the piece of vile fetid monstrous turd who is the Sky Daddy invented by Imperialist Persian Zoroastrian missionaries as a means for pacifying the Canaanite/Phoenician/Assyrian populations of ca. 450 BCE.

They keep on ignoring utterly any explanation based upon evolution and social evolution because of course to them evolution does not make any sense when applied to biology let alone when applied to sociology and anthropology.

In summary... objective morality ---> external rules ---> voila Ten Commandments.

Also related to that desire to shove their sky daddy through the trap doors of illogic is the desire to maintain that the descriptive rules of nature we have been able to derive as a means for describing what is, are PRESCRIPTIVE LAWS of nature that mandate what should be. Consequently, yet again, their imaginary friend and more precisely his ill begotten son must be the ones who ordained things be as they are.

In summary... prescriptive laws of physics and morals ---> a prescriber who ordained them ---> PRESTO ... an ill begotten son who became a human blood sacrifice to his adulterous rapist sky daddy who prefers wife-pimping cowards over all of humanity.

Wow, that is the worst rant/argument I have ever seen.

 

[phiwum]

Sorry, do you have something to say?

 

[baron]

I'm not familiar with him, but having skimmed a portion of his WP page, I'm not sure I'm interested.

He's a professional debater and that's not said in a good way. Basically he has a good command of oratory and can obfuscate with such panache that to the uninitiated it appears like he's making a valid point. In reality his arguments are vacuous but the average listener will not see this owing to his elaborate discursive smoke-screens.

 

[arthwollipot]

What's the appeal? It makes things easy. Someone presents you with a pesky Trolley Problem, you just look up the answer in your book.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Personally, a quote has stuck with me, from a religious-right guy trying to make the case for objective morality and rights. He ended his collection of fallacies with a delicious appeal to consequences: "If rights come from men, not from God, we're just one vote away from losing them."

And then it hit me. That's why the same guys clinging to their old timey privileges are so dead-set on absolute morals and rights given by God himself. Because what they're scared of, and what they try to deny, is that society as a whole can decide it wants to work in some other way, and revoke those privileges. If those privileges are just a social contract that seemed like a good idea at time X, the same society may decide to try another contract at a different time Y. That's why you'd want to handwave and flail like a moron, and pretend to be utterly unable to comprehend how it can work without God.

 

[pharphis]

He's a professional debater and that's not said in a good way. Basically he has a good command of oratory and can obfuscate with such panache that to the uninitiated it appears like he's making a valid point. In reality his arguments are vacuous but the average listener will not see this owing to his elaborate discursive smoke-screens.

Can confirm. It took me a few debates (though I wasn't familiar with formal debates much to begin with) before I realized that all he did was Gish Gallop and speak very dismissively about any rebuttal raised against him. I think Kagan and Carroll both did well in their debates against him and that everyone else that I've seen did relatively poorly

 

[tsig]

What's the appeal? It makes things easy. Someone presents you with a pesky Trolley Problem, you just look up the answer in your book.

It also allows you* to feel superior to those immoral atheists who have no objective morality.

*generic you

 

[tsig]

Can confirm. It took me a few debates (though I wasn't familiar with formal debates much to begin with) before I realized that all he did was Gish Gallop and speak very dismissively about any rebuttal raised against him. I think Kagan and Carroll both did well in their debates against him and that everyone else that I've seen did relatively poorly

WLC is a presuppositionalist. That is everything he undertakes to prove he first supposes it to be true.

 

[Senex]

Where are the Ayn Rand fans?

 

[pharphis]

WLC is a presuppositionalist. That is everything he undertakes to prove he first supposes it to be true.

Ah, true. He usually does't admit it but I recall someone asking him how he would react to using time travel to literally see with his own eyes that Jesus was not resurrected.

 

[Belz...]

I just don't see how one would even begin to show that objective morality exists. It sure can't be because evil cannot happen, so it's not like a law of physics. It's not because the universe punishes you when you do evil, because bad things don't happen more to bad people.

The only option I see is that the hypothetical creator's opinions are taken as "objective". That's debatable, as the creator is still a single "person". Who's to say that my opinion on the morality of X, different as it is from God's, isn't the correct one? On the simple fact that the creator disagrees? I don't find that convincing, even allowing for God's existence.

 

[pharphis]

^I think what you're referring to boils down to the Euthyphro dilemma. I think no matter the answer that it is not objective, however, unless you define objective like theists usually do by saying "independent of human opinion". . . then again, i'm not sure why we should care about some standard for morality if it has nothing to do with what we think about it. Why try to divorce morality from humans? Seems bizarre to me

 

[I Am The Scum]

WLC is a presuppositionalist.

No, he's not. Presuppers reject the very idea of using evidence to "convince" someone that God is real, because they believe that, deep down, everybody already knows. Craig's entire apologetic basis is using the evidence to prove God's existence.

 

[tsig]

No, he's not. Presuppers reject the very idea of using evidence to "convince" someone that God is real, because they believe that, deep down, everybody already knows. Craig's entire apologetic basis is using the evidence to prove God's existence.

A link to where he does that?

 

[I Am The Scum]

A link to where he does that?

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/

I'm not saying he succeeds, but that is his approach.

 

[tsig]

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/

I'm not saying he succeeds, but that is his approach.

From the link:

one is culpable for unbelief because ultimately unbelief is not due to intellectual or emotional factors, but to resisting the testimony of the Holy Spirit, which is God’s own self-authenticating witness to Himself.

If we presuppose a god it's obvious atheists are just in denial.

Didn't see any god proofs

 

[pharphis]

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/

I'm not saying he succeeds, but that is his approach.

Craig tries to use reason to convince people but he acknowledges that his arguments aren't the reason he believes and that evidence couldn't convince him he is wrong (such as the time travel example) - apparently his personal revelation trumps everything.

I can't remember the phrasing from his book but if I'm not mistaken he says that reasoning is only so good as it supports his current position. It's in the first chapter somewhere

 

[phiwum]

From the link:

one is culpable for unbelief because ultimately unbelief is not due to intellectual or emotional factors, but to resisting the testimony of the Holy Spirit, which is God’s own self-authenticating witness to Himself.

If we presuppose a god it's obvious atheists are just in denial.

Didn't see any god proofs

The cosmological argument is prominently discussed on his wikipedia page. That argument is a proof of God's existence (it's the "first cause" argument).

 

[arthwollipot]

^I think what you're referring to boils down to the Euthyphro dilemma. I think no matter the answer that it is not objective, however, unless you define objective like theists usually do by saying "independent of human opinion". . . then again, i'm not sure why we should care about some standard for morality if it has nothing to do with what we think about it. Why try to divorce morality from humans? Seems bizarre to me

Most religious people I've spoken to are completely confused by the Euthyphro dilemma.

As in, they are actually confused about why it's considered to be such a dilemma. Morals come from God. End of story. What's the dilemma?

 

[David Mo]

I don't know in what manner the belief in a god guarantees an objective morality. Different beliefs in different gods with different commandements cannot substantiate an objective morality that is unique or it is not objective. This is so because religious beliefs are not objective.

Some religious men claim that the lack of belief in any god (this is to say, agnosticism or atheism) precludes the existence of any morality because the force of a categorical imperative needs an external power to prevent absolute egoism. Here Ayn Rand and her -failed- rational egoism. But this is a different problem than ethical objectivism.

I think Sam Harris is not a solution for the problem of objectivism. Maybe evolutionary theory could establish that some particular behaviour is good to preserve the species, but this is not to say that to preserve the species is the supreme moral good. Furthermore, there are a lot of particular behaviours that are irrelevant to the preservation of the species and we ought nevertheless to evaluate them ethically.