tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post7625281704815282786..comments2023-10-24T04:29:23.693-06:00Comments on Atheist Ethicist: Only Atheists Can Be Moral?Alonzo Fyfehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05687777216426347054noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-2062573991373979282008-02-19T08:14:00.000-07:002008-02-19T08:14:00.000-07:00"To imagine the handicap that a religious moralist..."To imagine the handicap that a religious moralist is under, imagine the handicap that a physician would be under if he decided that all medical truths were written in the works of Hippocrates and that anything that deviates from his teachings is false? He would not be a very good physician." Excellent point, and excellent post. When it comes to comparing with medicine, I'd rather mention Hahnemann, the inventor of homeopathy.Christianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09160555681387976338noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-29465690803839119932008-02-10T12:41:00.000-07:002008-02-10T12:41:00.000-07:00"Religion did not invent morality."Exactly... the ..."Religion did not invent morality."<BR/>Exactly... the theist view is that morality comes out of the character of a personal Creator. Therefore, I do not accept your argument for animals having morality, as where would the concept of right and wrong come from in a creature with no self-awareness?<BR/>"Anybody who goes to the Bible for moral guidance is going to an extremely unreliable source." Wow. Then I guess the manuscripts used for Homers writings, among many other ancient texts, are absolutely unbelievable since we only have less then 10. 20,000+ manuscripts for the New Testament, and 99.9 percent agreement, with no doctrinal discrepancies. Yup, wholly unreliable.<BR/>"When secular philosophers discover a new moral truth (e.g., that slavery is wrong), these Christians write these new moral truths into their interpretation of scripture..." Well, if you actually knew the history, Christians (by fruit, not only nominal) are responsible for initiating abolition of slavery. (Wilberforce and Newton in England; Abe Lincoln, etc.) Atheists are indeed exceedingly more apt to murder and use millions for the good of a few (i.e. Communist China, Stalin, Lenin, etc). <BR/>Furthermore, the very fact that you are using "evil and good", "right and wrong" terminology is borrowing my, as a Christian Theist, names for concepts that atheists, if you are truly honest and consistent, could not even accept (as I stated earlier, morality comes from the very "nature" of Creator God). If atheism is true, and you are consistent with your logic, then randomness is responsible for all things (randomness within the laws that govern matter, energy) and there is no okay/not okay, there just "is". Hitler just did things. Consistent atheist positions hold to an existence that if I want that, natural selection allows me to take it unless you can stop me.<BR/>Sir, with all due respect, you are using a few too many "only"s, "always"s, "never"s and other over-generalizations that utterly undercut your arguments.<BR/>Good lUck,mashmouthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03081076218786318456noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-73965466436488161212008-02-06T05:44:00.000-07:002008-02-06T05:44:00.000-07:00I think I am answering my own question here but st...I think I am answering my own question here but still really want to see your stance on this. In particular your previous answer a few weeks ago was unsatisfactory.<BR/><BR/>Any to answer the basic question of "fulfilling obligations when one does not want to" your distinction between satisfaction and fulfillment comes into play. What one "wants" to do, is in some sense satisfying as well as fulfilling, where obligations are, in the stereotypical scenarios, just fulfilling and specifically not satisfying. Once you look at it this way, and realizes that one seeks to fulfill the more and stronger of ones desires, the question becomes how the weighting factor of satisfaction can be outweighed by other factors - including other desires such as the desire to fulfill obligations. The answer is social conditioning.<BR/><BR/>Still I think that obligations are a special type of desire/reason to act, are you happy with my extension of ape mentality via the human capacity to symbolize, abstract and operate over abstractions including time? And finally can you differentiate between social and moral obligations or not?Martin Freedmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16952072422175870627noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-12833761248438704152008-02-04T21:17:00.000-07:002008-02-04T21:17:00.000-07:00Are these two claims contradictory? "So, if a pers...Are these two claims contradictory? <BR/><BR/><BR/>"So, if a person does the right act in order to avoid punishment or to obtain an award, he is still performing the right action. <BR/><BR/>It is not the case that a right action can be performed for the sake of obtaining a reward or avoiding punishment."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-26721198578491325022008-02-04T04:35:00.000-07:002008-02-04T04:35:00.000-07:00Hi Alonzo another excellent post. Hope you have re...Hi Alonzo another excellent post. Hope you have recovered from your flu.<BR/><BR/>I think DU is the best stab at solving the problem of morality I have seen but I have one objection remaining before I can really accept it. This is over the theory of obligation. <BR/><BR/>Having read your book you use the concept of "desire-independent reasons to act" to stand for things such as intrinsic prescriptivity etc. which we both agree do not exist. However there is another meaning of this and I will try and state this following John Searle, not that I fully agree with him on this either...and, of course, any errors are my fault.<BR/><BR/>Searle argues that there is a difference between ape and human mentality and that that humans can have a certain type of desire-independent reasons. Still he insists there are no reasons to act without desires. What he means is that certain reasons to act are <B>triggered</B> (I would say) by duties, commitments, promises (which are not stereotypical but unusual as the agent voluntarily and deliberately imposes the obligation on themselves) and these are all reasons to act that apes are incapable of. Unlike Searle I would say that we have the capacity to symbolize, abstract and operate over abstractions such as time so that we can have <B>expectations</B> - beliefs we hold to be true about the future and <B>obligations</B> - reasons to act in the future that are often independent of our agreement. <BR/><BR/>The key point is that when when these obligations are activated we may have no desire to carry them out - that is to make them "effective reasons" - indeed this is the stereotypical issue - <B>to fulfill obligations when we don't want to</B>. Indeed that is often the reason we make a promise, because otherwise we know we will not, or not want to, carry it out at that future time.<BR/><BR/>His solution to this, and I am agnostic on this and interested to hear yours, is that we have "recognitional rationality" such that when we recognise an obligation we recognise this as a reason to act and such a recognition already means that we do indeed have a reason to act, with the relevant related desire. These obligations are "external motivators" but of this and only this specific kind and only due to our non-ape capacity of "recognitional rationality". By recognition he means we do <B>not need to deliberate on this</B>, we <B>do not decide</B> that this is a reason to act, the recognition of the obligation alone is sufficient to have a reason to act (with the relevant desire).<BR/><BR/>It is then not a question of how strong this desire is, whether we do fulfill it or not and whether, as you say, we have a desire to encourage people to fulfill their obligations nor whether this is a social or moral obligation (which you have to date failed to differentiate and maybe you don't want to?) This all comes afterwards.<BR/><BR/>Now, as far as I understand we all reject deontic, consequentialist and contractarian solutions to the theory of obligation, still the core question is what is your theory of obligation, specifically of fulfilling obligations when we, in some sense, don't want to? Over to you :-)Martin Freedmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16952072422175870627noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-82550055901182029672008-02-04T02:28:00.000-07:002008-02-04T02:28:00.000-07:00Once again, well said :)Once again, well said :)Divided By Zer0https://www.blogger.com/profile/02161522651023903941noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-58315518149728582062008-02-03T23:47:00.000-07:002008-02-03T23:47:00.000-07:00Samuel SkinnerI think a more accurate statement is...Samuel Skinner<BR/>I think a more accurate statement is that only an atheist can act both morally and consistantly. Religious people have to choose one or the other.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com