25 Aug 16
Originally posted by sonshipI didn't say that any questions were insulting to the intellect. What I said is that the typical arguments given in favor of the kinds of claims at issue in the OP are insulting to the intellect. Maybe that's the problem here? You and Fetchmyjunk fail to distinguish between a question and an argument? That certainly seems to be the way things go here: ask for an argument from you guys, get a question in response.I suppose at this point, the motivation of theistic escapism is to dissolve this conflict by taking that bedrock and purporting to place it in something external to us and our world, such as God or something equally as mysterious, where the bedrock here concerns moral grounding or value and meaning, etc.
And this recognition that God mu ...[text shortened]... existence of God ?
Are both questions an insult to your philosophical intellect ?[/b]
25 Aug 16
Originally posted by sonshipShift the goalposts much? You only got one line in before you segued abruptly from Nagel to Dawkins, of which the relevance of bringing up you did not establish.
[quote]
Somehow, so the story goes, without God or whatever we are left with this debilitating skepticism towards these matters of high existential seriousness; whereas with God we find our solid footing again. This seems just a way of projecting agency onto the view sub specie aeternitatis , since that just is the view of God in a sense. Clearly enough, t ...[text shortened]... o from the absurdity of a "blind pitiless indifference" to the oppressed with moral wrongdoing ?
However, I can establish relevance for you. Knowingly or not, what you have written about Dawkins here (assuming you have correctly redescribed his view, which I'm not sure and don't care anyway) is more or less a perfect expression of the absurd that Nagel writes about. One takes up some detached view of life; feels the absurdity in that introspection; and yet it does not disengage one from the seriousness with which one meets life. Again, just precisely what Nagel is talking about.
Now, you seem to think that this justifies the idea that "we have to escape" this sort of absurdity. And I guess what you are trying to drive at with the bevy of questions that follows (again, questions do not constitute arguments) is that we have to escape into…what, theism? At any rate, the idea that one has to escape is false. One of the primary points here is that the feelings of absurdity that attend the introspection sub specie aeternitatis are not backed up by any adequate rational considerations. So why should we be motivated to escape? The key is to understand that the detached view that one takes up and introspects upon is actually a very impoverished vantage point from which to assess things like meaning and value in life. These are things that saturate life endogenously as one lives day to day, and they don't somehow evaporate just because one can introspectively subject them to doubt from the detached view. The detached view is good for generating wholesale doubt but not so good at generating well-informed evaluative assessments. If you think rationally-detached wholesale doubt is a sufficient motivator to take up theism, then we'll just have to disagree about that. I would prefer that one take up theism only at the prompting of good epistemic reasons. And the real gotcha point here – and one that the balance of the Nagel essay tries to impress – is that such escapism does not actually work anyway. It’s like "escaping" from the frying pan into the fire.
25 Aug 16
I found this quote from CS Lewis to be quite interesting:
The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something-some Real Morality-for them to be true about.
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25 Aug 16
13 edits
Originally posted by LemonJello
Granted that this is your take on it. But that you cannot seem to conceive of things like justice, rightness, morality in the absence of God does not justify the claim that God is conceptually necessary for such things.
This touches on the question I asked which you find irrelevant. That question was - "If justice does not exist then does injustice really exist? "
You should agree that many people get away with wrong doing. Or at least they think they will not be held accountable. The pedophile who sexual exploits a child and then murders it may not be found out by the law. These things do happen.
For what he has done, unknown to anyone (apparently) he assumes he is undetected and will live out his life in happiness. Justice will not overtake him. Now if we agree that justice will not overtake him because no one is available to enforce the moral scales of the universe to balance things out, then we have to ask then - Does injustice really exist ?
If there is no straight line how can we determine what is crooked ?
I hear you saying - This does not require God. But what you would like to substitute for an ultimate Governor to balance out the moral scales is probably mostly inept, powerless to a great degree, wishful to a great degree, and unable to truly enforce the real balancing out of the moral scales of the universe.
i would probably submit that your substitute for a Governor of perfect rightness, omniscience, omnipotent, and omnipresent, is weak. There is no real and solid justice to await too many of us, Probably all of us getting away with no accounting to an enforcing agent.
Like Adolf Eichmann who said after the Nuremberg trials, he would jump into his grave laughing at what he was able to get away with. Injustice is made illusory because there exists no real justice.
Nothing crooked exists because there is no straightness against which "crooked" can be compared.
I anticipate you saying that we have the courts, the judges and lawyers, plenty of them are non-theists. And they see to the carrying out of justice just fine without a concept of God.
To a degree this will keep society preserved. However innocent will be punished wrongly, because these agents are fallible.
Guilty will get away because human weakness will subscribe to bribes. Guilt will also go undetected. Innocence also will go undetected. Resources or lack therefore will lead to miscarrages of justice. Man is fallible. Some, frankly, are able also to outsmart the system.
The line is less crooked perhaps. But it is not completely straight.
It is better than nothing. But it is not the ideal of what humans feel OUGHT to be, namely no moral miscarrage but a setting of the moral scales at perfect balance.
Setting the moral scales at perfect balance requires God by definition. Let's say part of that definition is a moral enforcer for whom a greater knowledge, awareness, equity, righteousness, authority and power cannot be thought.
Going back now to the example of the pedophile who raped a child, murdered the child and went for the rest of his life undetected. I believe that you are not happy with that prospect. I believe that you sense something of moral outrage that such a crime was not visited.
Perhaps you say "Well we did the best we could." But I think that this rationale will still leave you feeling the moral scales were not balanced.
You will protest, "God is not necessary." But I think you borrow (or steal) from a God existing worldview where perfect justice ought to prevail and perfect balancing of the universe's moral scales ought to have taken place.
If you're at peace with the raping, murdering pedophile jumping into his grave laughing at what he got away with, I think that is a tragically absurd world you believe in.
If on the other hand you feel an unease that something is amiss with the undetected escape from accountability, I think you are somehow admitting the necessity for God. Your [edited] stealing from a theistic world view fuels your feeling that injustice has prevailed in this case.
If you cannot but help stealing from a God existing world view of an ultimate infallible justice, you should open to the idea that God is really there. Your need to unintentionally steal from that worldview (where someone will perfectly balance the moral scales) could mean that God actually exists and has put that leaning in you by design.
You and Fetchmyjunk continue to present no actual argument for this, instead falling back on the strength of your own God-dependent commitments
To convince me of this, I think you would have to do one of two things, with the example I have given above.
1.) You would have to show me that you actually are perfectly satisfied that the raping, murdering, undetected pedophile will melt peacefully into the earth's dust and never face anyone calling to account.
No big deal. Be happy. Accept this as the way things have to go.
2.) Propose an alternative enforcer of the moral balance of the universe that is infallible, cannot err, cannot overlook a hidden crime, cannot let the moral scales be left in embalance concerning that man's choice to thus behave.
This alternative enforcer has to be either someone else you know besides God or some material of metaphysical affair or principle negating the necessity for a Supreme moral Judge.
Propose something to me since I am pretty sure you're not apathetic to the undetected crime.
and general incredulity regarding any God-independent view,
I am inviting you to describe a God-independent perfect moral balancer of the scales in the above situation. I am expecting you to propose one or opt that it is no big deal if the raping, murdering pedophile melts peacefully away never accounting for his crime.
I am expecting an alternative moral enforcer of perfect quality you propose other than God or express your being at peace that there will be no ultimate accounting by that pedophile ever.
25 Aug 16
Originally posted by sonshipContribute something substantial?Another psychoanalyst, sweet, we are blessed indeed.
Blessed indeed ? Good. Contribute something substantial.
From where does the human sense of the way things [b] ought to be morally, come from ?[/b]
i have. You don't respond.
Don't pretend to care
Originally posted by LemonJelloSorry for the book!
I don't really understand why you say truth "requires a standard". But perhaps I do not fully understand the claim. One could say that truth just consists in an objective relation between a truth-bearer (e.g., the content of a proposition) and a truth-maker (e.g., a fact). So if you have a proposition that picks out a fact,that sounds like truth to me. ...[text shortened]... to do with justifying the claim that God is somehow conceptually necessary for moral grounding.
If there isn't a standard unit of measure everyone is bound to then all of us can make it all
up as we go. Every standard that two different people come up with now is compared to
the internal views of everyone who studies them has within, and each of them will be
saying yea or nay. They can do this because within each of them is something we all
acknowledge they have and it is shared by all. If there were not some universal standard
we are all aware of, when we are confronted with choices than why bother? Fish do not
have an opinion on the best flight patterns of Eagles as they soar around mountains,
even if you dropped one from a mountain top I doubt they would care what Eagles
thought, they share completely different world views not common ones.
Why God would be involved basically boils down to who else could put within mankind
our common knowledge of right and wrong? It has to come from a higher power or we
would be in a broken hodgepodge of various views instead of our common themes.
Different starting points would mean that our root causes would begin with someone
completely different. All of the views genesis would be generated in people from varies
places, time frames, and values. We don’t see truly different views instead we see small
variations of behavior where we disagree.
If we didn’t acknowledge each of us is aware of the same standard of behavior, debate,
arguments and a like would not be the first response. Why do we see self-justification?
Self-justification would never be necessary if our standards were different, but now we
see anyone acting badly presents an excuse for their behavior some measure of letting
everyone else know they were justified, the exceptions being a complete psychopaths.
Unless you believe the human race is acting in a completely acceptable means I believe
you have drawn the conclusion something must be corrected. God I “BELIEVE” gave us a
very good universe and we screwed it up. The results of which is we are getting what we
want, and that isn’t always what we need. I think God’s day to day grace is viewed as
God being okay with bad behavior. I feel this is really only giving us born after the fall a
chance for grace, and in the end when all is said and done and we get to see the root
causes for each deed and word. We will all agree with God’s judgment and be witnesses
to the truth.
Even in our disagreements we are making judgment calls, our words are pouring out what
is within our hearts so when good and evil are completely unmasked and we are no
longer seeing this as through a glass darkly justice will occur. So with God giving us day
to day grace, and grace to accept Jesus’ work for us we are simply moving through time
moving towards a time when evil is just reveal for what it is nothing more than a speed
bump in the process of God’s creation.
25 Aug 16
Originally posted by FetchmyjunkIt is along the same lines of KellyJay's comment that truth requires a standard. I still don't really agree, though. The claim that one set of ideas is "better" than another could simply be reporting that it picks out more relevant facts, or is overall closer to the facts of the matter, than the other. I don't see why it implicates some external "standard" unless that is just proxy for whatever the actual facts of the matter are. If it is just proxy for the facts, then I don't disagree. The basic gist seems right to me. Of course, this is neither very relevant nor ground-breaking: of course people are going to be committed to moral facts. The question for you is why should we think such facts must have constitutive dependence on God?
I found this quote from CS Lewis to be quite interesting:
The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in ...[text shortened]... se of the Nazis less true, there must be something-some Real Morality-for them to be true about.
25 Aug 16
Originally posted by sonshipGranted that this is your take on it. But that you cannot seem to conceive of things like justice, rightness, morality in the absence of God does not justify the claim that God is conceptually necessary for such things.
This touches on the question I asked which you find irrelevant. That question was - "If justice does not exist then does ...[text shortened]... your being at peace that there will [b] be no ultimate accounting by that pedophile ever.[/b]
Now if we agree that justice will not overtake him because no one is available to enforce the moral scales of the universe to balance things out, then we have to ask then - Does injustice really exist ?
And what are on the left and right of these "moral scales of the universe"? Are they "justice" and "injustice" in this case? If so, then surely for internal consistency of your own hypothetical, you would have to answer yes, injustice really exists. After all, you would be the one stipulating that the scales are weighted toward injustice and no balancing will subsequently occur. Well, that already presupposes that there is injustice; else, the scales wouldn't be tilted that way. Sorry, I just don’t get the point of this hypothetical.
And it makes no sense when integrated into the rest of your argument. You place high importance on there being retributive justice in order to balance these "moral scales of the universe". But, if what you are trying to imply here is true (that lack of retributive justices means no injustice in the first place), then what exactly is the big deal? If the murderer or rapist gets away scot-free, then there was no injustice in the first place. If there was no injustice in the first place, then what exactly is the problem? Obviously, there's some major confusion within your lines of reasoning here.
There's also a conceptual difference between justice and the ability to police justice, just like there is a difference between laws and the ability to police those laws. If we do not have perfect ability to police them, that doesn't somehow mean they don't exist. In fact, just the contrary, the state of affairs in which we have imperfect ability to police them already basically presupposes that they exist. Hence why your above hypothetical seems so bizarre: the existence of them is conceptually prior to our inability to perfectly police them.
If I understand your argument, it basically goes like this:
(1) If justice is only imperfectly realized, then it doesn't exist in the first place.
(2) Only God can perfectly realize justice.
(3) Hence, God is necessary for the existence of justice.
Is that a fair restatement?
Premise (2) may well be true. But Premise (1) is totally implausible, if not just self-contradictory. If justice is imperfectly realized, then justice exists but just in an imperfectly realized state. See, no problem.
I am inviting you to describe a God-independent perfect moral balancer of the scales in the above situation. I am expecting you to propose one or opt that it is no big deal if the raping, murdering pedophile melts peacefully away never accounting for his crime.
Sorry, that is a false dichotomy. I can accept that there exists no cosmic moral balancer who ensures perfect justice and yet still hold that it is a big deal when instances of irrevocable injustice occur. There's nothing inconsistent about that. And, in fact, there's nothing inconsistent in holding that some injustices are big deals precisely because they are irrevocable by their nature. Have you ever considered the idea that some instances of injustice are like a bell that cannot be un-rung and that you may simply be confusing balancing retributive justice with petty vindictiveness? The whole concept of a cosmic moral balancer relies on some underlying principle that instances of injustice are such that they can be righted or balanced sometime down the road. And that is really not obvious at all. That may simply be wishful thinking.
If the thought of injustice grieves you and produces moral outrage in you, then I can understand that. That may be just part of what it means to be a compassionate and morally integrated person. But I cannot understand the inference from there to the idea that God must exist. That's just sloppy reasoning that sounds a lot like a fallacy in the vein of appeal to consequences.
25 Aug 16
Originally posted by LemonJello"Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis and Dallas Willard book "The Divine Conspiracy" I do
It is along the same lines of KellyJay's comment that truth requires a standard. I still don't really agree, though. The claim that one set of ideas is "better" than another could simply be reporting that it picks out more relevant facts, or is overall closer to the facts of the matter, than the other. I don't see why it implicates some external "stand ...[text shortened]... The question for you is why should we think such facts must have constitutive dependence on God?
believe have had a huge influence on my views. I think I've recommended to you Willard's
book before, I don't recall if you read it. I may be mistaken about that.
25 Aug 16
Originally posted by KellyJay
Sorry for the book!
If there isn't a standard unit of measure everyone is bound to then all of us can make it all
up as we go. Every standard that two different people come up with now is compared to
the internal views of everyone who studies them has within, and each of them will be
saying yea or nay. They can do this because within each of them is s ...[text shortened]... is just reveal for what it is nothing more than a speed
bump in the process of God’s creation.
Why God would be involved basically boils down to who else could put within mankind
our common knowledge of right and wrong? It has to come from a higher power or we
would be in a broken hodgepodge of various views instead of our common themes.
Different starting points would mean that our root causes would begin with someone
completely different. All of the views genesis would be generated in people from varies
places, time frames, and values. We don’t see truly different views instead we see small
variations of behavior where we disagree.
The idea that common knowledge of right and wrong in man could only come about through overseeing by some external higher power is very dubious. Common knowledge exists over a wide range of cognitive terrain, not just moral matters. And a lot of common knowledge is built up over time by us humans. Are you claiming that all this knowledge could only have come about through some higher power instilling it, or is this special pleading for the specific case of moral matters? At any rate, humans have evolved over a long time, and moral knowledge has accumulated and disseminated down the generations. The commonality involved is really not that hard to explain in totally God-free terms, just based on time evolution, the processes by which knowledge is amassed, and the shared experiences of humans despite their spatial and cultural differences, along with basic mechanisms of natural selection. And, certainly, there are eminently plausible God-free accounts of how the human moral faculty has evolved and could be expected to support a lot of commonality regarding shared moral intuitions. See, for example, The Evolution of Morality by Joyce.
25 Aug 16
Originally posted by KellyJayI recall we had some discussion on some of Willard's work, though I don't know if it involved The Divine Conspiracy.
"Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis and Dallas Willard book "The Divine Conspiracy" I do
believe have had a huge influence on my views. I think I've recommended to you Willard's
book before, I don't recall if you read it. I may be mistaken about that.
Here's a link to those good old days:
Thread 146192
26 Aug 16
1 edit
Originally posted by LemonJelloI remember looks like I did not stay engaged sorry. I think we were moving cross country.
I recall we had some discussion on some of Willard's work, though I don't know if it involved The Divine Conspiracy.
Here's a link to those good old days:
Thread 146192
26 Aug 16
Originally posted by sonshipA couple of thoughts/questions... the first one:
The pedophile who sexual exploits a child and then murders it may not be found out by the law. [ ... ] Like Adolf Eichmann who said after the Nuremberg trials, he would jump into his grave laughing at what he was able to get away with. Injustice is made illusory because there exists no real justice.
So, [1] the pedophile who sexual exploits a child and then murders it, [2] Adolf Eichmann who was responsible for the industrial style extermination of millions of people, [3] my Muslim neighbour who thinks the Christian version of the Jesus story is a mistake and a corruption of the 'Word of God', and [4] someone who simply does not believe in supernatural explanations for the human condition... they all get tortured for eternity, all of them, the same fate, they all share the same "damnation"... is that what your notion of "real justice" entails?
26 Aug 16
Originally posted by sonshipThe second observation/question...
The pedophile who sexual exploits a child and then murders it may not be found out by the law. [ ... ] Like Adolf Eichmann who said after the Nuremberg trials, he would jump into his grave laughing at what he was able to get away with. Injustice is made illusory because there exists no real justice.
[1] the pedophile, [2] Adolf Eichmann, [3] my Muslim neighbour, and [4] the atheist... they can possibly all avoid getting tortured for eternity, avoid "damnation", and instead 'live forever in paradise' and achieve "salvation" in spite of their lifetime of deeds/thoughts, as long as they repent and "accept" Jesus even if they don't do it till their dying breath... is that what your notion of "real justice" requires people believe?