DK, Euthyphro and God as the claimed ultimate case of “might makes right”

_{kairosfocus
August 27, 2015

Evolutionary Incoherence, Politics, rhetoric, worldview

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Sometimes UD’s comment exchanges are highly informative.

In this case, in a Quote of the Day thread:

DK, 15: >> [To WJM]

[WJM to Seversky, 14:] If I can one minute decide for myself that a moral code is binding on me, and decide for myself the next minute that it is not, exactly how is any moral code, the “binding” nature of which we decide for ourselves, binding?

Strawman erected by misrepresentation. Seversky said that his moral code is “binding,” which means that it is not changeable at a whim.

You have chosen to have an authority “bind” you. You chose that for yourself, using free will.

You have nothing to feel superior about.>>

DK, 16: >>Barry:

[to Seversky] Under your worldview the strongest prevails; the weak succumb.

Under your worldview, God (the strongest) prevails. You (the weak) succumb.

Where is your moral superiority?>>

In general reply:

WJM, 17: >>Daniel King said:

[To BA] Strawman erected by misrepresentation. Seversky said that his moral code is “binding,” which means that it is not changeable at a whim.

Sure it is. He decides for himself whether or not his morals are binding; it is in fact, and by definition, changeable at a whim.

What’s the penalty if Seversky breaks his moral code? Or changes them on a whim? In what sense are they “binding”?

You have chosen to have an authority “bind” you. You chose that for yourself, using free will.

What authority have I chosen to “bind” me? I’d be careful about making assumptions here.

You have nothing to feel superior about.

You’re right.>>

I thought, there were deeper worldview issues lurking and — with a gap imposed by Erica causing a power outage — responded at 18:

________________

KF, 18: >> [To DK:] With all due respect, it is a strawman tactic, fallaciously cheap rhetorical shot to try to project “might makes right” unto God.

Such is a classic example of a too-neat answer that should make you ask yourself, if it’s so quick and simple why have a lot of very serious thinkers across time disagreed with my neat little Euthyphro dilemma-rooted point?

Is good independent of the gods or just another label for the capricious wishes of the gods imposed by will and power to back it up?

Do you see the gaping hole that is there?

As in, making up and knocking over one or more straw-gods, AND TURNING YOURSELF INTO YOUR OWN STRAW GOD BY CONTRAST IN A “MIGHT/ MANIPULATION MAKES ‘RIGHT’ . . . ” NIHILISTIC MORAL CHAOS?

(As in, “I” get to select and choose just which moral rules I wish to be bound by . . . backed up of course by my will to power.)

Reductio, ad absurdum; induced by implicit assumption of inherently amoral a priori evolutionary materialism or its influence on its fellow travellers.

Back to basics, instead.

Do you have a right to your life, to liberty, to innocent reputation?

If not, instead of arguing with you, why not simply shoot you, or lock you up or lock you out [and bleating “censorship” is of no account as on your a priories there is no basis for an ought-not] or simply lie and smear to rob you of your reputation. Oops, “rob” is freighted with ought-not, so it’s more like pin you down, drag down your drawers rhetorically and “take” your reputation if I have a fancy to it, enjoying your screams and futile pleas for pity or respect as part of the fun.

(Resemblance to rape is wholly intended, and I ask you to look very carefully at how often those on your side have resorted to raping the innocent reputations of people on our side then posted whole web sites full of outing — targetting — information, arguing that we asked for it. If you don’t feel ashamed at the routine resort to tactics of violation by your side, you better ask yourself, why. As they say back in my homeland, the frog told the boy approaching it, stone in hand: fun for you is death to me.)

But, but, but, a community that falls into such circumstances will disintegrate!

Shades of Kant and the point that evil, when it spreads, disintegrates the community and/or — strictly logically equivalent as Kant showed — uses others of like value as mere objects and means to my ends rather than respecting them as ends in themselves.

That’s a first clue.

One, that points to a key point about us: we are responsibly free, morally governed creatures, who have RIGHTS, which implies that others have duties to respect our life, liberty, innocent reputation, etc.

That is, we have excellent reason to recognise that for people to thrive, rights must be recognised and respected as inhering to beings who have intrinsic, quasi-infinite value and a dignity that demands justice, despite adverse balances of power.

Might does not and cannot make right.

Further, we only can thrive (which implies that we ought to value human thriving) in a community that strives to sustain the civil peace of justice.

And along the way, the very fact that we here have reasoned argument, implies that we intuit and accept that we do have responsible freedom of thought and action — something that cannot obtain on a priori evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers, as Crick for instance acknowledged in his 1994 The Astonishing Hypothesis, in a stunning bit of self-referential incoherence clad in a lab coat badged with a Nobel Prize:

. . . that “You”, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased: “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.” This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people today that it can truly be called astonishing.

In short, we have every good reason to see that we are responsibly free, reasoning, morally governed creatures.

That is, we are patently under government of OUGHT.

Which, points to the step by step iterative chain of questions, what grounds OUGHT-X (Y, of course), then OUGHT-Y (Z of course), then OUGHT-Z . . . ?

Thence, we are in the territory of the IS-OUGHT gap.

Is there an infinite regress? Circularity? Or, a finitely remote foundational level?

A summary of why we end up with foundations for our worldviews, whether or not we would phrase the matter that way}

Of these, only a finitely remote foundational set of first plausibles is a serious candidate.

Infinite regress is absurd and dodges the issue of warrant, and circularity (as opposed to coherence) is question-begging.

Thus, we are looking at comparative difficulties across main foundational alternatives, on factual adequacy, coherence and balanced explanatory power (vs. ad hoc patchworks or simplistic force-fitting).

And yes, we are looking at worldview roots and philosophical issues and approaches.

Just what a world dominated by scientism is wont to despise, disregard, dismiss.

Ill-advisedly, not least as the notion that all serious knowledge is scientific is a self-refuting philosophical claim.

We are back to: how can we bridge the IS-OUGHT gap?

For which, the only sound answer is, we must find a world-root IS properly capable of bearing the weight of OUGHT, grounding a world of responsibly free, morally governed creatures who genuinely have a claim to justice as they have rights that go beyond might/manipulation and ‘rights’ as convenient rhetorical clubs.

That takes us to matters ontological as well as moral, as that is what IS and OUGHT demand.

So, in a nutshell, first, the world we experience is rooted in necessary being. For non-being has no causal powers and if there ever were an utter nothing such would therefore forever obtain. Something is unconditioned and primary, tied inextricably to the existence of a world.

There is a world-root IS.

Is it an infinite regress or a circular, self-causing entity? The latter instantly collapses as something must exist in order to have effects. The former simply postpones the problem, and introduces the super-problem of counting down from infinity to reach an origin for our observed world, in finite successive causal steps:

minus-infinity –> minus (infinity less one) –> minus (infinity less two) –> [and yes, I know this is absurd, that is precisely the point] . . .

– 2, – 1, 0 [origin of our world], +1, + 2, . . .

+ us here today [say at 0-point + 13.7 BY] –> . . .

We can call this, the getting to zero problem.

(Or, equivalently, the leaving minus infinity problem. [Hint: In Mathematics, infinities are either pointed to as in principle present but not feasible of reaching in finite steps, or are manifested by subdivision/implication of the continuum such as a line segment, or are presented all at once as a Set such as N, Z, R or C.] )

The way to bet is, a finitely remote world-root IS.

How can such an IS bridge to OUGHT?

Only by being in itself inherently moral, and particularly morally good.

In short — as I have noted here at UD ever so many times — the only serious candidate IS to root the world and bridge to/bear the weight of OUGHT is: the inherently good Creator God, a necessary and maximally great world-root being, worthy of ultimate loyalty and our reasonable service of doing the good in light of our evident nature.

If you doubt or dismiss, kindly provide and justify a serious alternative: ________________ . . .

(Predictably, setting distractors, patently non-serious candidates and side-tracks aside, there will be none.)

How can such answer Euthyphro’s dilemma?

By first noting that such a being is radically different from ourselves and from the sort of nihilistic supermen gods projected unto Mt Olympus or wherever.

Next, we see that good and God are inextricably mutually involved, so the project of separating good from God collapses.

A conceptual failure to understand what God inherently is.

Nor is God simply imposing arbitrary will and power, as his creatures with natures that manifest evident value, dignity and purpose, we owe and are owed mutual duties of justice, both to one another and to our Creator.

Hence, the too often repeated project of trying to pretend that the tail of a sheep is a leg and demanding that such must now be treated as a leg collapses for the same reason that we cannot create a new primary colour, such is not in our remit. We are not God, and the inherent natures of tails and legs so diverge that a sheep’s tail simply will not work as a leg.

Might/manipulation do not and cannot make ‘right.’

And, as a bonus, we see why a doctrine of eternal audit/judgement makes sense — God owes us the duty of justice and a final hearing.

Which, we most assuredly will face by the same eternal justice that is a part of that inherent goodness of God.

Guaranteed to us by “the man ordained,” and shown to be such to all, by his resurrection from the dead as “first-fruits of them who sleep.”

And of course, this all comes full circle to the force of the point Locke cited from Hooker in his 2nd treatise on civil govt as he founded in thought what would become modern liberty and democracy:

. . . if I cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every man’s hands, as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire which is undoubtedly in other men . . . my desire, therefore, to be loved of my equals in Nature, as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to themward fully the like affection. From which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn for direction of life no man is ignorant . . . [Hooker then continues, citing Aristotle in The Nicomachean Ethics, Bk 8:] as namely, That because we would take no harm, we must therefore do none; That since we would not be in any thing extremely dealt with, we must ourselves avoid all extremity in our dealings; That from all violence and wrong we are utterly to abstain, with such-like . . . ] [Eccl. Polity, preface, Bk I, “ch.” 8, p.80]

It is time for fresh thinking.>>

________________

So, what do we think, why? END

Comments

F/N: This thread has been pretty much dragged off track from quite early, a strong sign of the rhetorical pattern, distract, distort, denigrate. Or, more bluntly, red herrings led away to strawmen soaked in loaded projections and set alight to cloud, confuse, poison and polarise the atmosphere. Whether that is led by talking point zombies echoing mindlessly their indoctrination, or the direct work of the actual primary, knowingly deceitful agitprop cultural civil war manipulators or their willful enablers who put up cleverly disguised false front groups, and through such send out legions of the indoctrinated through astroturfing stratagems, makes little difference; save to how we should view the objectors and how we should treat them as individuals. The key sign of such agitprop at work is that we will see stubborn resistance to balancing reason and evidence, especially to tracking the chains of warrant on issues that come up to their natural terminus in worldview roots, then further resistance to reflecting on comparative difficulties on live option alternatives. Where of course, many people have been misled to think that rhetorical debates and talking point exchanges divorced from the chain of warrant worldviews roots challenge, are adequate for making major personal, familial, institutional, legal, policy and civilisational decisions. Such have been severely manipulated and misled, regardless of how intelligent, certificated, influential and respectable they may be. And yes, I am saying that our enchantment under the spell of rhetoric has set up horrific marches of folly leading to chaos for our whole civilisation. We can therefore take it to the bank, that where astroturfing games and talking point agendas are at work there will be no real reply on the main merits, as running through the thread above will show. We are dealing with manipulative culture war agendas, not serious discussion. The attitude to the warrant chain pointing to worldview roots is diagnostic. The first pivot, is that we need to firmly fix that conclusions and proposals for our civilisation's agenda must be warranted. That puts the chain of warrant and the triple-issue: [1] infinite regress vs [2] circularity vs [3] finitely remote worldview core first plausibles to be assessed on comparative difficulties . . . at the heart of consideration. That various objectors are ever so eager to dismiss this, is a sure sign of just how important it is. The logic involved is plain, it is not on trial, the objectors are. And, consistently, predictably, they fail. With but few exceptions. They want to go on the debate talking point attack, they do not want to engage in sober discussion on grounding, i/l/o main alternatives (all of which bristle with difficulties) on factual adequacy, coherence, explanatory power. [Cf here for a primer: http://www.angelfire.com/pro/kairosfocus/resources/Intro_phil/toolkit.htm .] Next, the issue on the table in the OP was the attempt to accuse God of being the ultimate appeal to might makes 'right,' reflecting the so-called Euthyphro dilemma. The answer to this, is to first examine whether or no, we can reasonably see ourselves as being responsibly free, rational, morally governed beings. That is the basis for rights and the general expectation of the promotion of the civil peace of justice, duly balancing rights, freedoms and responsibilities in healthy community. And it turns out that to dismiss the testimony of our inner life that we are so free, reasonable and governed, lets grand delusion loose in our inner lives, ending in self-referential absurdity that would undermine even trying to have responsible rational dialogue. So, it is self-evident that (for all our struggles and failings) we are responsibly free and reasonable, so also morally governed. We cannot but start there, on pain of instant absurdity. Of course, that is in no wise to suggest that we are perfect or can attain perfection in this life. It just means, we have every good reason to know we can do better and to strive in that path. So, the actual track record of far too often not even seriously trying (often, while projecting blame to the other for much the same things we do . . .) indicts us. Yes, all of us. Planks vs sawdust in eyes time. Now, observe carefully, at no point have I inserted or assumed anything beyond that we find ourselves in a common world and per common sense reflection, we find ourselves necessarily responsibly free and rational, on the whole. So, we can and should do better. Too often, we don't, and we are individually and collectively blameworthy for that. Guilty, guilty, guilty, we are. All of us. But, that situation calls for drilling down, as we see the IS-OUGHT gap, and if the above holds, it must be bridged. The only serious level for that is the same for any serious argument: world foundations. How can morality, the OUGHT, be embedded in the roots of reality, the IS that grounds our world and our experience? Surely, that is a serious question, one that deserves to be properly answered at world-roots level. If it were not so sad, it would be amusing to see how above (and previously) there was an attempt to substitute a principle of discovery of moral rules among responsibly free, rational and morally valuable persons, pushed into the role of substituting for the ontological roots of morality. That someone thought he could get away with that itself speaks volumes to our want of responsibility in thought. Never did we find a serious answer to the immediate observation that such a rule of learning presupposes that we share a common, morally freighted nature that gives us rights, freedoms and responsibilities. Nor, to the point on historical and current cases, that it is the dehumanisation of those targetted that is a common precursor to distinctly un-neighbourly conduct. Which, puts our common nature and how that connects to moral worth, rights, responsibilities and freedoms right in the heart of considerations. Patent, world-roots issues. It therefore points onward to foundations, as we can see in the US DoI of 1776, as we may infer from Locke's citation of Hooker in his 2nd treatise on civil govt ch 2. It is indeed explicit in Matt 22, where love to God as creator and root of being sets the context for a rule like unto it, love for neighbour as self, sharing the common Imago Dei. That is clear. The desperation not to look at foundations in light of the logic of chains of warrant therefore jumps up and waves its arms with big red flags as a warning sign. Something has gone wrong. To fix it, we must go . . . to world-roots level. Now, in a modified form the same chain principle used for warrant applies to the roots of reality. We descend across time from those roots, in a causal succession: . . . --> C , --> B, --> A (us) --> . . . How does that chain get to us? Traversing an infinite succession step by step is absurd, for many reasons linked to getting to the zero-point (say the big bang, 13.7 BYA):
minus infinity, --> minus infinity plus 1, --> . . . -1, --> 0 [big bang] --> . . . --> C , --> B, --> A (us) --> . . .
Absurd from the outset on, infinite sets are either presented all at once or are pointed out as a trend, not a thing we can traverse in successive steps. Likewise, circularity of cause involving origins is a non-starter, as something has to be there before it can cause anything else. If you doubt this, kindly provide an example: _________ None will be forthcoming, as non-being -- the real nothing -- has no causal powers. So, we are looking at a finitely remote root of being. Next, we can see that as non-being has no causal powers, if ever there were utter nothing that would forever obtain. So, as there undeniably is a world, something always was. Something that is the root of reality and obviously is an ultimate, and is unconditioned on anything else. That is, it is a necessary being, one that is possible [not impossible as a square circle is] and is not contingent [dependent on other things for its existence]. Such beings would be present as part of the framework for any possible world. As a simple example, the truth asserted in "2 + 3 = 5" never began, does not depend on any cause to enable it to begin to exist, will hold in any possible world, and will never cease to hold. Such are the ways of necessary beings. (And yes, our formal and informal education has ill-equipped us to think in such terms. No prizes for guessing how that came to be.) Notice, we have reached here long after the establishment on our experience of ourselves in our world that we are credibly responsibly free and rational. Indeed this first point is a context in which we are exploring and characterising the root of reality. Now, we introduce a serious reality-root candidate necessary being (a flying spaghetti monster etc would not be serious, as composite and material, to begin with . . . ):
the inherently good Creator God, a necessary and maximally great being, worthy of ultimate loyalty and the reasonable service of doing the good in accord with our evident nature.
There is no claim that this is the only possible candidate, we simply invite a serious alternative that can meet the relevant test of a world infused with responsibility, rationality and moral government: ______________ (Predictably, this blank will continue to be unfilled, and there will be an attempt to resort to rhetoric, instead of discussion of worldview level alternatives.) We have here an exercise in worldview level inference to the best explanation, which is inherently open-ended but as we know from science, law and history, is a very powerful form of inductive reasoning, if given half a chance. Now, just above, MNY observed that many materialists champion freedom etc despite the lack of worldview foundation for that. I answer, yes, they are reflecting the moral government from within, and they are borrowing the depleting cultural resources of Christendom; even as our civilisation descends into chaos. MNY then -- despite multiple correctives and warnings -- makes the fatal step of an improper equivalency:
Same with your responsible freedom etc. I do not see where choosing and subjectivity is logically implied with the neccessary being.
Sorry, responsible freedom is not contradicted by the existence of a necessary being root of reality, indeed that responsible freedom stands as a self evident truth antecedent to reasoning and thus before reasoning towards such a being as root of reality. Yes, matter cannot credibly account for freedom, responsibility and contemplative mind (and even has grave difficulties accounting for the FSCO/I implicated in organisation of a computational entity such as a brain in a body), but there is no reason why supreme mind cannot give rise to mind. And yes, a root of reality capable of the purposeful behaviour of creating a world and of grounding ought would be mind. Mind beyond matter which is inherently contingent as we have known ever since E = m*c^2. So, the attempt to suggest that it is from necessary being that we get to freedom in the first instance, is a strawman caricature. Responsible freedom as self-evidently true and a premise of rational discussion was the first step. Independent of all others. A context in which other steps were then considered, confident that we are indeed responsibly free and rational. Otherwise, discussion is just an exchange of ultimately meaningless mouth noises. All that is required is that a root of being capable of creating a world of morally governed, thus reasonable and responsibly free creatures, is compatible with such. Which is patently so. If a free mind is possible for the root of reality, there is no good reason why significantly free minds cannot exist otherwise. Nor does the idea that we are accountable to our Creator as Lord and Just Judge, undermine our freedom and responsibility. An executive of a corporation is responsible to a board, but that does not remove his responsibility, rationality or freedom. As to subjectivity, reasonably understood, a responsibly free, rational and self-aware being is a subject and has an interior life, i.e. subjectivity: we think, perceive, feel, value, believe, reason, evaluate, decide, motivate ourselves towards purposeful action. That does not remove responsibility to act in light of common sense reason and conscience, though obviously, existentially, the ought at this level is too often not the is. And indeed, law in the abstract is inherently about the government of such beings who have power of choice and duty to choose aright. In that context, the notion that God imposes his might to arbitrarily make up right to be this or that per whim and fancy, collapses. At the root of reality, the IS that is the root of all, being inherently good, infuses the world with that character, and in creating beings that are responsibly free and guided by conscience and reason. OUGHT is a choice, not the programmed IS of robotic zombification. Nor is just audit and judgement in defense of the civil peace of justice equivalent to arbitrary might making arbitrary 'right.' That some are prone to that gross confusion speaks volumes on how broken down our moral thought is today. In that light, let us note, the gods of Greece were supermen projected to the sky, not the inherently good necessary and maximally great being root of reality Creator God. So yes they were inadequate to found morality. Not so, the Eternal, inherently good and true God, the root of reality, the God of ethical theism in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, whose service is our reasonable duty (and should be our delight). In short, the above thread speaks volumes on how broken down our culture of worldview level thought has become. With devastating consequences visible all around us. KFkairosfocus_{September 7, 2015
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And there are loads of materialists championing democracy, freedom of opinion etc. But materialism provides no room for subjectivity at all. They just champion it in contradiction to, and in spite of materialism. Same with your responsible freedom etc. I do not see where choosing and subjectivity is logically implied with the neccessary being. We can immediately see that regarding the existence of God as a matter of opinion validates subjectivity and freedom. Where is the logic that goes from a neccessary being to freedom and subjectivity?mohammadnursyamsu_{September 6, 2015
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MNY, with all due respect, this is more of the same. It is therefore sensible to give one day for final comments. KF PS: Before repeating, kindly note 18 & 19 above and their context ever since the OP and beyond . . . no I am not just talking mechanistic or chance cause and effect. Responsible rational freedom, self evidently, is the premise of rational discussion. And that has been repeatedly highlighted as a key step. Take that as a measure of just how much of an irresponsibly loaded strawman you have set up to knock over.kairosfocus_{September 6, 2015
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As before, it is the most excellent feature of creationism that it accommodates subjectivity, expression of emotion. Including expressions of emptiness, which means there is no spirit there at all. And that opinion is then the awful reality, that there is no God. You are saying subjectivity does not deal with reality? You mistake that subjectivity does not deal with the reality of creation, what is in the material domain, but it does deal with the reality of what is in the spiritual domain. That you criticize an opinion, for the sole reason that it is an expression of emotion, is all what I argue against. Then predictably you assert logic and fact against opinion. (and I already explained more then once how fact and logic also fit with creationism besides subjectivity) What you have to do to address my concerns is make clear where subjectivity fits in with this "necessary being" construct. But all what you argue just further adds to my concern that indeed the necessary being construct rejects subjectivity. Further, I do not see your creation science either. The mechanism of creation is choosing. Like with fine tuning arguments, or irreducibly complex arguments, they refer to specific ways in which things have been chosen. Yet, you only seem to talk in terms of cause and effect, not choices. As before, the concept of choosing does not function when the agency of a decision is regarded as fact. Because facts operate by force, evidence forcing to a conclusion resulting in a fact, and choosing requires freedom.mohammadnursyamsu_{September 6, 2015
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MNY: At this stage, you are projecting falsehoods in the teeth of repeated correction, you are trying to improperly taint reputations through well-poisoning, and you are manifesting the fallacy of the closed, hostile, ideologised mind. We are not butterflies on pins but real people (millions) who you are slandering by improperly painting as enemies of responsible freedom, so kindly stop. Now. I substantiate: >>All who would deny freedom of opinion>> 1 --> projection of a fixed assumption about those who differ with you, based on a twisted and fallacious argument cf, following >>are in the group of original sin.>> 2 --> This goes off into the weeds on theology, it seems from the Islamic view that rejects the Christian view that from our primordial ancestor we have inherited a proneness to wrong. That may be a clue as to root motivation. 3 --> These first loaded assertions, in context, are an accusation based on a fallacy of the complex question (it is patently PRESUMED, that I and others deny freedom of opinion -- at this stage, given repeated corrections, a lie), and a groundless one. You are projecting false accusations in the teeth of adequate correction. 4 --> Kindly, stop this uncivil behaviour. Now. >>It doesn't matter if a social darwinist does it, or if some religious construct subverts it.>> 5 --> In context, social darwinists no longer exist at least officially. So, you mean that for the thought crime of thinking God to be the Eternal I AM (that is what is implicit in God as necessary being), you would double down on false accusations. 6 --> Yes, holding God to be eternal is tantamount to holding him to be a necessary being. (Contingent beings depend on external enabling factors and that is why they begin, need support to sustain existence, and can cease from being.) >>The materialists are quite more blatant about it, but for a time I have been trying to get more insight into religious rejection of subjectivity>> 7 --> In context, me, but this is patently false. It pivots on an imposed question-begging idiosyncratic -- and unnannounced -- redefinition of what it means to be a responsibly free individual. where, to believe that God is eternal is to deny responsible freedom. Ludicrous. >>, which I find is more obscure, more difficult to understand. >> 8 --> More projection and doubling down rooted in locked in assumptions that have already got you into trouble. For instance, are you willing to deny that God is eternal and independent of other things for his existence? >>My criticism was that the neccessary being construct tends to deny freedom of opinion.>> 9 --> actually, more like an ungrounded, locked in assumption used to project accusations and insinuations against those who differ, whilst being oblivious to the flaws in the assumption. >> I do not feel that I am free to accept or reject a being which is "neccessary".>> 10 --> Let's see, do you feel free to accept or reject the entities 2, 3, and 5 as necessary beings, and the relationship 2 + 3 = 5 as a necessarily true proposition? Is that a concern? I'll bet not. 11 --> Let's explain, showing that such are necessary in any world, even one with no material objects, by starting with the abstraction, the empty set, and assigning symbols of cardinality which will look familiar:
{} --> 0 {0} --> 1 {0,1} --> 2 . . . i.e. N From N we get Z, Q, R and C, thence objects that combine such, e.g. matrices etc. Also, we readily see || + ||| --> |||||
12 --> You awful tyrant, you destroy my freedom of opinion to hold that 2 + 3 = anything I want. NOT. 13 --> I simply show that while you can choose to do anything like that, such is irrational as twoness, threeness, fiveness and their interconnectedness are inextricably intertwined in the framework for existence of any world. Only an ignoramus or madman would insist on clinging to the absurdities implicit in denying or dismissing these relationships and entities. 14 --> But, God is different! Yes, and the argument presented is different too. 15 --> Notice, the first issue is not God, but rootedness of reality in a world where it is absurd to deny the reality of causal chains down to us: . . . C --> B --> A (now) --> . . . (the future) 16 --> What fills in the lead-up? Circular self causation involving coming into existence is absurd, and it is infeasible to descend from minus infinity to 0 [we can take that as the big bang], cf. the OP. 17 --> That leaves a finitely remote root cause of reality, which is a necessary being. Where, a serious candidate to be such a being will either be impossible (as a square circle is impossible) or else actual. 18 --> And in a world where we find ourselves to be responsibly free, rational and morally governed beings on pain of letting general delusion loose in our inner lives, we need a root-being that can ground responsible freedom and rationality. (Notice the start-point, the recognised fact of freedom and responsible reason, this is where the outrageous projections you have been making become so blatantly in the teeth of truths . . .) 19 --> It bears repeating, in the teeth of your projections and invidious insinuations, acknowledging responsible freedom and rationality as facts of the human condition on pain of general delusion is a start-point. To deny it is to descend into general delusion. (That is one reason your projections are both unjust and utterly without foundation.) 20 --> In this context, as the OP outlines, a CANDIDATE is introduced, per the logic of inference to best worldview level explanation (a form of inductive not deductive reasoning):
the inherently good Creator God, a necessary (so, inter alia, eternal . . . ) and maximally great being worthy of ultimate loyalty and the reasonable service of doing the good as informed by our evident nature.
21 --> As can be seen for the price of scrolling up, the invitation is then extended, produce a superior candidate: ________________ 22 --> It is predicted: none will be forthcoming, but there will be every distortion, distraction and dismissal. Precisely as seen. 23 --> But, it is also patent that there is no compulsion involved, only the challenge to coherently, adequately account for the roots of reality, including our responsible and rational freedom on the basis of an alternative. 24 --> Where, atheists are gently reminded that if they hold they know there is no God, they need to show such a necessary being is incoherent as to core characteristics rendering God impossible. (A project that, post Plantinga, has collapsed with the breakdown of the classic problem of evils. Not to mention, as Boethius highlights, its inability to address the longstanding issue of good.) 25 --> Those who suggest they are well informed and have taken the stance that they have no need for belief in deity in that light, face the same issue and the additional one, that as compared with what is to be known, their base of knowledge is as a mathematical point to the cosmos; open-minded epistemic humility rather than dismissiveness would more become such a creature. >> That the being is neccessary makes me feel I am forced to accept the existence of said being, because of the neccessity.>> 26 --> There is no force of compelling the will by some appeal to the stick, only an invitation to reasonableness and dialogue in light of evident facts, coherence and explanatory power. Where, the production of such strained, loaded talking points conjoined to ducking the invitation speaks tellingly. >> And so that's why, noting that religious affairs are important for societal affairs, it seems likely to me that such an argument is usable to deny freedom of religion by a government.>> 27 --> A veiled, utterly unwarranted projective accusation of totalitarian intent. Do you really want me to read that back-ways through the mirror-principle that out of the abundance of the heart the mind projects and the mouth speaks? (BTW, those genuinely wishing to understand what I actually think about government . . . instead of setting up and knocking over toxically loaded strawman caricatures, as well as on liberty and democracy etc can see here on in context: http://www.angelfire.com/pro/kairosfocus/resources/Government_under_God.htm#librts ) >>I also entertained the idea of a neccessary being a long time ago. It is just impossible to think that it may come to be that there would exist nothing, or not even nothing, unreality, etc.>> 28 --> Given that (as the OP clearly outlined) non-being has no causal capacity, were there ever utter nothing, such would forever obtain. In short the fact of a world points to underlying reality that there was always something, the root of our world. >> But then later I changed that because feelings of emptiness, maybe they aren't very moral, but they are very human.>> 29 --> Feelings of emptiness have nothing to do with the logic of being. This is naked appeal to dismissal on emotions. >>There is no doubt that the universe it being a contingency, can cease to exist. And then it is just a matter of opinion what is in the spiritual domain.>> 30 --> An evident fact is conceded, but its implications as just outlined, are suppressed through emotional commitment and a slippery use of "opinion" and "spiritual." (The implication is, faith lacks rational suppoort and if there is a context of reason, that undermines freedom to believe and is totalitarian. Rubbish, pomo rubbish tracing to the idea that totalising metanarratives are oppressive. But in fact that is a totalising generalisation and cuts its own logical throat by means of self-contradiction. Instead, responsible reasonable faith defining a serious worldview and way of life is eminently possible and actual.) >> And if so a feeling of emptiness is expressed, then a double nothing both material, and spiritual is found to be valid, denying the neccessary being construct.>> 31 --> Empty words in dismissal of facts and evident logic, through appeal to emotions and wishes. >>And I think my argument against nazism, communism, materialism etc. that they reject subjectivity is right on target.>> 32 --> Such a cluster reveals invidious intent, esp in context the etc. >> I don't think a nazi would be a nazi if they would reach the conclusion about what emotions somebody has by a way of choosing the answer. It seems to me essential to nazism that the worth of the Aryan, their emotions, is regarded as fact, which is also what sabotages conscience.>> 33 --> irrelevant to what is focally on the table, also speculative projections. >> I think it is more crucial in regards to morality how people view people, and not how people view God. If the agency of a decision is regarded as a subjective issue, then morality is invited. That is the root of all subjectivity. If not, then it's a big problem.>> 34 --> Again, people are contingent beings and cannot be the IS that grounds OUGHT. The attempt to appeal at this level ends in might makes 'right.' 35 --> And that is the real gateway to tyranny as ruthless factions vie for and seize power. It is time, more than time, for serious rethinking MNY. KFkairosfocus_{September 6, 2015
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All who would deny freedom of opinion are in the group of original sin. It doesn't matter if a social darwinist does it, or if some religious construct subverts it. The materialists are quite more blatant about it, but for a time I have been trying to get more insight into religious rejection of subjectivity, which I find is more obscure, more difficult to understand. My criticism was that the neccessary being construct tends to deny freedom of opinion. I do not feel that I am free to accept or reject a being which is "neccessary". That the being is neccessary makes me feel I am forced to accept the existence of said being, because of the neccessity. And so that's why, noting that religious affairs are important for societal affairs, it seems likely to me that such an argument is usable to deny freedom of religion by a government. I also entertained the idea of a neccessary being a long time ago. It is just impossible to think that it may come to be that there would exist nothing, or not even nothing, unreality, etc. But then later I changed that because feelings of emptiness, maybe they aren't very moral, but they are very human. There is no doubt that the universe it being a contingency, can cease to exist. And then it is just a matter of opinion what is in the spiritual domain. And if so a feeling of emptiness is expressed, then a double nothing both material, and spiritual is found to be valid, denying the neccessary being construct. And I think my argument against nazism, communism, materialism etc. that they reject subjectivity is right on target. I don't think a nazi would be a nazi if they would reach the conclusion about what emotions somebody has by a way of choosing the answer. It seems to me essential to nazism that the worth of the Aryan, their emotions, is regarded as fact, which is also what sabotages conscience. I think it is more crucial in regards to morality how people view people, and not how people view God. If the agency of a decision is regarded as a subjective issue, then morality is invited. That is the root of all subjectivity. If not, then it's a big problem.mohammadnursyamsu_{September 5, 2015
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MNY, Which government, when and where? (I assure you that modal ontological reasoning has nothing whatsoever to do with any positions of government anywhere. And so it is no surprise you say you have no evidence. You don't because it does not exist, nor is it a reasonable expectation. You are projecting, and projecting improper things. In my homeland, we would say, you are out of order.) You seem to be terrified somehow of a government somewhere imposing believing in God by force. The massive evidence is just the opposite, of many cases of government sponsored promotion and even imposition of evolutionary materialist scientism, duly dressed in the lab coat. With a death toll in the past century of in excess of 100 millions, not counting the in process laughter of hundreds of millions of the unborn. So, have you been standing up and denouncing this, expressing deep concern over such subversion of science institutions and science education? I doubt it. There is simply no genuine connexion between believing in God, or before getting to that, accepting that the logic of being and modes of being point to our world being rooted in necessary being and any totalitarian ideology or agenda. None, you are making up a false narrative agit-prop scare story based on stereotyping and scapegoating ethical theists. FYI there is a fundamental right to innocent reputation and in a day of political censorship, internet slander mobs who try to harm people in livelihood and life and outright persecution of Christians and Jews, you have issued fighting words. Logic indeed has force, but it is the force of truth and reason [much weaker rhetorically than that of appeals to emotions or even apparently credible authority], not appeal to tyranny. You can freely ignore logic and facts or principles it is based on, but there will be natural consequences to marches of folly. As has already been stated by me above in almost so many words. You do not know me, and yet you seem to want to think I am a nazi or something like that. (Likely, you believe the error promoted by Stalin, that Nazism is a right wing totalitarian ideology, multiplied likely by buying into the lies that Christians are right-wing theocratic fascists. Nazi, FYI is short for National Socialist German Workers Party, and the Nazis understood themselves to be socialists, and were understood by others to be socialists. Benito Mussolini, founder of the Italian Fascist party, was a leader of the Socialist International, who broke with it over Nationalism, his fascism used control of the economy rather than takeover of ownership, but was all about utter state domination and control. No great surprise, from what, the 1880's on, increasingly, socialism was seen as the inevitable future, even by its conservative opponents. It is the unexpected collapse of the 1980's that turned that general view around.) Has it registered with you that I have repeatedly taken a public stance for liberty and for constitutional democratic government -- including right here in this blog? That I have ever so many times called attention to the guidance in the 2nd Paragraph of the US DoI, and the key citation Locke made from Hooker? That I am in fact a convinced, though pessimistic supporter of constitutional democracy? I believe, for cause, our civilisation is on a march of folly that -- absent a miracle -- is likely to end in blood and tears. But I would betray my Lord (and my family heritage, starting literally with the history written into my name) if I did not stand up for the right and the truth because it is right and because it is true, regardless of consequences. I suggest to you that you are now seriously out of order. KFkairosfocus_{September 5, 2015
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@kairosfocus I am quite convinced that the "neccessary being" argument was already used by governments to force acceptance of people that God exists. I have no evidence of it, but I would not be surprised. The government would simply argue that because the existence of God is neccessary, it is then unlawful to reject the existence of God. Why not do that, sounds like a great idea to promote rationality, responsibility and whatnot. There is nothing in what you said about a neccessary being which supports choosing, or freedom of opinion. In contrast, when the existence of God is regarded as a matter of opinion, then choosing is required to form the opinion that God is real (or not real). That is straightforward support for freedom of religion. You have freedom only as a threat (unpredictability, irrationality and whatnot). The mechanism of creation is choosing. That means that cause and effect are chosen as 1. There are no effects without causes, or causes without effects. A cause is not the "creator" of an effect, the creator chooses the cause with the effect together. The car has the potential to go about, but it is spontaneity which pushes the gaspedal down, bringing into being all the causes with their effects of the moving car.mohammadnursyamsu_{September 5, 2015
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MNY: It seems I need to post a little tutorial on modes of being, to bring out what necessary being means (hint: it does not destroy freedom of opinion, on religious or other subjects.) Okie, let me clip from the NCSTS U2 (here and scroll): ___________________ >> . . . For a fire to begin or to continue, we need (1) fuel, (2) heat, (3) an oxidiser [usually oxygen] and (4) an un- interfered- with heat-generating chain reaction mechanism. (For, Halon fire extinguishers work by breaking up the chain reaction.) Each of the four factors is necessary for, and the set of four are jointly sufficient to begin and sustain a fire. We thus see four contributory factors, each of which is necessary [knock it out and you block or kill the fire], and together they are sufficient for the fire. This may be studied by lighting a match. For instance, strike one, and let it half burn. Then, tilt the head up. Watch the flame fade out for want of an ON/OFF enabling factor, fuel. Similarly, if one pulls a second match and instead of wiping on the friction-strike strip, moves it rapidly through the air -- much lower friction -- it will not light for want of heat. If we were to try to strike a match in pure Nitrogen instead of air, it might flare at first (depending on what is in the head) but the main fuel, wood will not burn for want of a good oxidiser. And so forth. As a similar exercise, one may set a candle stub in a tray of water and light it. Then, put a jar over the candle, such that water can be drawn up into it. After a little while, the candle will go out for want of the oxidiser in air, Oxygen. (One should do the actual experiment, at least to the stage of making a match fade out. Many of us will have done this or the like in school. [And, as quantum phenomena are often posed as a great mysterious counter-example to the logic of our everyday world, we should note that a fire is doubly a quantum phenomenon. First, the rapid oxidation reaction, and second the emission of photons of light, which makes the process visible to us. Indeed, we should note how creators of fireworks add particular chemicals to the mix to get desired colours, and more seriously a spectroscope can allow us to learn much about a fire by revealing its spectrum. And, enabling causal factors such as those in the fire tetrahedron are pervasive in quantum processes, e.g. -- and yes this is trivial, but the trivial sometimes also makes a key point -- no unstable atom, no radioactive decay, and the like; cf. here for more.]) We thus see by definite and instructive example, the principle of cause and effect. That is, [d'] if something has a beginning or may cease from being -- or, generally it is contingent -- it has a cause. Common-sense rationality, decision-making and science alike are founded on this principle of right reason: if an event happens, why -- and, how? If something begins or ceases to exist, why and how? If something is sustained in existence, what factors contribute to, promote or constrain that effect or process, how? The answers to these questions are causes. Without the reality behind the concept of cause the very idea of laws of nature would make no sense: events would happen anywhere, anytime, with no intelligible reason or constraint. As a direct result, neither rationality nor responsibility would be possible; all would be a confused, unintelligible, unpredictable, uncontrollable chaos with nothing having a stable existence or identity. That is, this principle is directly linked to the identity cluster already outlined. Indeed, it can be noted that if something A is possible, its defining attributes must be coherent, unlike the contradictions between requisites of squarishness and circularity that render a square circle impossible: DIAG: One and the same object cannot be circular and squarish in the same sense and place at the same time Also, since it often comes up, yes: a necessary, ON/OFF enabling causal factor is a causal factor -- if there is no fuel, the car cannot go because there is no energy source for the engine. Similarly, without an unstable nucleus or particle, there can be no radioactive decay and without a photon of sufficient energy, there can be no photo-electric emission of electrons: that is, contrary to a common error, quantum mechanical events or effects, strictly speaking, are not cause-less. (By the way, the concept of a miracle -- something out of the ordinary that is a sign that points to a cause beyond the natural order -- in fact depends on there being such a general order in the world. In an unintelligible chaos, there can be no extra-ordinary signposts, as nothing will be ordinary or regular!) However, there is a subtle facet to this, one that brings out the other side of the principle of sufficient reason. Namely, that there is a possible class of being that does not have a beginning, and cannot go out of existence; such necessary beings are self-sufficient, have no enabling, ON/OFF external necessary causal factors, and as such cannot be blocked from existing. And it is held that once there is a serious candidate to be such a necessary being, if the candidate is not contradictory in itself, it will be actual. [Such a thing is possible if it is not impossible . . . as a square circle is impossibly self contradictory as the necessary attributes for something to be squarish and those required for it to be circular stand in mutual contradiction.] Or, we could arrive at effectively the same point another way, one which brings out what it means to be a serious candidate to be a necessary being [after, Avi Sion]:
If a thing does not exist it is either that it could, but just doesn't happen to exist, or that it cannot exist because it is a conceptual contradiction, such as square circles, or round triangles and so on. Therefore, if it does exist, it is either that it exists contingently or that it is not contingent but exists necessarily (that is it could not fail to exist without contradiction). [--> The truth reported in "2 + 3 = 5" is a simple case in point; it could not fail without self-contradiction.] These are the four most basic modes of being [--> possible vs impossible and contingent vs non-contingent] and cannot be denied . . . the four modes are the basic logical deductions about the nature of existence.
That is, for a successful candidate necessary being: since there is no external ON/OFF enabling causal factor, a successful candidate necessary being will exist without a beginning, and cannot cease from existing as one cannot "switch off" a sustaining external factor. As a simple example the true proposition 2 + 3 = 5 and its constituent numbers are such necessary beings. To see that, try to imagine a world where, 2, 3, 5 and the operation of abstractly joining 2 and 3 to form 5 did not exist or can cease from existing, or where it is false that || + ||| --> |||||. Another possibility of course is that such a candidate being is impossible: it cannot be so as there is the sort of inescapable contradiction of defining attributes as is involved in being a proposed square circle. So, we have candidates to be necessary beings that may not be possible on pain of contradiction, or else that may not be impossible, equally on pain of contradiction. (Thus, the law of non-contradiction is inextricably entangled into possibility of being, and thence into cause and effect. Attempts to sever the two are wrong-headed and inevitably fail.) Of course, something like "a flying spaghetti monster" -- which would be built of components and depends on their particular arrangement to be what it would be, is not a serious candidate to be a necessary being. (NB: Such has been suggested in dismissive parody of the iconic creation of Adam that appears in Michelangelo's famous Sistine Chapel painting. God, of course is symbolised in that painting as an Old Man, the Ancient of Days, but that is just a representation. God is a serious -- nay, the most serious -- candidate to be a necessary being.) In addition, since matter as we know it (such as what goes into spaghetti and noodles as well as eye-stalks and eyes) is contingent, a necessary being will not be material. The likely candidates are: (a) numbers such as 2, (b) abstract, necessarily true propositions and (c) an eternal mind . . . often brought together by suggesting that (d) such abstract truths or entities are held in and eternally contemplated by such a mind. >> ___________________ In short, necessary being does not entail coerced choice on opinions, religions etc. Save, insofar as responsible freedom implies duties of care to truth and right. But patently, we may violate such duties of care, by ignorance, negligence or willful misconduct. Of course, if you climb up an ackee or breadfruit tree and jump off, imagining you can fly [to heaven or to Africa makes no difference], you will be lucky if you break your arm, and for sure the authorities will commit you as a lunatic. And yes, that is a real world case. KFkairosfocus_{September 5, 2015
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@sean samis It is very obvious that constitutional democracy centered around freedom of opinion has provided loads of peace and morality on the societal level. To base morality on the facts of nature is what communism and nazism tried to do. So the issue is broadly that we have nazi's and communists living in a democracy, undermining it. We have people who do not really accept the validity of opinion, because to make good and evil a fact destroys all opinion. Materialism destroys all opinion. God as a neccessary being destroys freedom of religion. Etc. If people would be taught how choosing works at school, taught what they already know, teach how choosing works in common discourse, then awareness of freedom is raised to an intellectual level, and people would more understand that opinions can only be formed by choosing. It would be democratic people living in a democracy.mohammadnursyamsu_{September 5, 2015
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F/N2: By contrast, Lewontin on evolutionary materialist scientism is revealing in a very different fashion:
. . . to put a correct view of the universe into people's heads [==> as in, "we" have cornered the market on truth, warrant and knowledge] we must first get an incorrect view out [--> as in, if you disagree with "us" of the secularist elite you are wrong, irrational and so dangerous you must be stopped, even at the price of manipulative indoctrination of hoi polloi] . . . the problem is to get them [= hoi polloi] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations,
[ --> as in, to think in terms of ethical theism is to be delusional, justifying "our" elitist and establishment-controlling interventions of power to "fix" the widespread mental disease]
and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth
[--> NB: this is a knowledge claim about knowledge and its possible sources, i.e. it is a claim in philosophy not science; it is thus self-refuting]
. . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists [--> "we" are the dominant elites], it is self-evident
[--> actually, science and its knowledge claims are plainly not immediately and necessarily true on pain of absurdity, to one who understands them; this is another logical error, begging the question , confused for real self-evidence; whereby a claim shows itself not just true but true on pain of patent absurdity if one tries to deny it . . . and in fact it is evolutionary materialism that is readily shown to be self-refuting]
that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality [--> = all of reality to the evolutionary materialist], and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test [--> i.e. an assertion that tellingly reveals a hostile mindset, not a warranted claim] . . . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us [= the evo-mat establishment] to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes [--> another major begging of the question . . . ] to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute [--> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door . . . [--> irreconcilable hostility to ethical theism, already caricatured as believing delusionally in imaginary demons]. [Lewontin, Billions and billions of Demons, NYRB Jan 1997,cf. here. And, if you imagine this is "quote-mined" I invite you to read the fuller annotated citation here.]
And, we should not overlook the inadvertent self-referential incoherence of Ruse and Wilson, by way of letting grand delusion loose in our thinking:
The time has come to take seriously the fact that we humans are modified monkeys, not the favored Creation of a Benevolent God on the Sixth Day. In particular, we must recognize our biological past in trying to understand our interactions with others. We must think again especially about our so-called ‘ethical principles’. The question is not whether biology- specifically, our evolution-is connected with ethics, but how. As evolutionists, we see that no justification of the traditional kind is possible. Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God’s will … In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding… Ethics is illusory inasmuch as it persuades us that it has an objective reference. This is the crux of the biological position. Once it is grasped, everything falls into place . . . [The Evolution of Ethics, Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson, in Religion and the Natural Sciences: The Range of Engagement, 1991]
Of course, above, SS tried to snip off and dismiss this, but in fact it is closely connected to the logic of descent with modification driven by chance variation and differential reproductive success of sub-populations. So, if one differs with these eminent scholars from the Darwinist perspective, there is some need to justify and substantiate. Worse, that same logic undermines rationality and knowledge from the same evolutionary perspective; as was highlighted by Nancy Pearcy in her recent Finding Truth:
A major way to test a philosophy or worldview is to ask: Is it logically consistent? Internal contradictions are fatal to any worldview because contradictory statements are necessarily false. "This circle is square" is contradictory, so it has to be false. An especially damaging form of contradiction is self-referential absurdity -- which means a theory sets up a definition of truth that it itself fails to meet. Therefore it refutes itself . . . . An example of self-referential absurdity is a theory called evolutionary epistemology, a naturalistic approach that applies evolution to the process of knowing. The theory proposes that the human mind is a product of natural selection. The implication is that the ideas in our minds were selected for their survival value, not for their truth-value. But what if we apply that theory to itself? Then it, too, was selected for survival, not truth -- which discredits its own claim to truth. Evolutionary epistemology commits suicide. Astonishingly, many prominent thinkers have embraced the theory without detecting the logical contradiction. Philosopher John Gray writes, "If Darwin's theory of natural selection is true,... the human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth." What is the contradiction in that statement? Gray has essentially said, if Darwin's theory is true, then it "serves evolutionary success, not truth." In other words, if Darwin's theory is true, then it is not true. Self-referential absurdity is akin to the well-known liar's paradox: "This statement is a lie." If the statement is true, then (as it says) it is not true, but a lie. Another example comes from Francis Crick. In The Astonishing Hypothesis, he writes, "Our highly developed brains, after all, were not evolved under the pressure of discovering scientific truths but only to enable us to be clever enough to survive." But that means Crick's own theory is not a "scientific truth." Applied to itself, the theory commits suicide. Of course, the sheer pressure to survive is likely to produce some correct ideas. A zebra that thinks lions are friendly will not live long. But false ideas may be useful for survival. Evolutionists admit as much: Eric Baum says, "Sometimes you are more likely to survive and propagate if you believe a falsehood than if you believe the truth." Steven Pinker writes, "Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes the truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not." The upshot is that survival is no guarantee of truth. If survival is the only standard, we can never know which ideas are true and which are adaptive but false. To make the dilemma even more puzzling, evolutionists tell us that natural selection has produced all sorts of false concepts in the human mind. Many evolutionary materialists maintain that free will is an illusion, consciousness is an illusion, even our sense of self is an illusion -- and that all these false ideas were selected for their survival value. So how can we know whether the theory of evolution itself is one of those false ideas? The theory undercuts itself. A few thinkers, to their credit, recognize the problem. Literary critic Leon Wieseltier writes, "If reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? ... Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it." On a similar note, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks, "Is the [evolutionary] hypothesis really compatible with the continued confidence in reason as a source of knowledge?" His answer is no: "I have to be able to believe ... that I follow the rules of logic because they are correct -- not merely because I am biologically programmed to do so." Hence, "insofar as the evolutionary hypothesis itself depends on reason, it would be self-undermining."
The institutionally, educationally and culturally dominant evolutionary materialist perspective and its accommodationist fellow travellers have some serious 'splaining to do. Explaining that is highly relevant to addressing morality, the IS-OUGHT gap and the attempt to force-fit the Euthyphro dilemma on ethical theism. KFkairosfocus_{September 5, 2015
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F/N: Locke in the intro to his essay on human understanding, section 5:
Men have reason to be well satisfied with what God hath thought fit for them, since he hath given them (as St. Peter says [NB: i.e. 2 Pet 1:2 - 4]) pana pros zoen kaieusebeian, whatsoever is necessary for the conveniences of life and information of virtue; and has put within the reach of their discovery, the comfortable provision for this life, and the way that leads to a better. How short soever their knowledge may come of an universal or perfect comprehension of whatsoever is, it yet secures their great concernments [Prov 1: 1 - 7], that they have light enough to lead them to the knowledge of their Maker, and the sight of their own duties [cf Rom 1 - 2 & 13, Ac 17, Jn 3:19 - 21, Eph 4:17 - 24, Isaiah 5:18 & 20 - 21, Jer. 2:13, Titus 2:11 - 14 etc, etc]. Men may find matter sufficient to busy their heads, and employ their hands with variety, delight, and satisfaction, if they will not boldly quarrel with their own constitution, and throw away the blessings their hands are filled with, because they are not big enough to grasp everything . . . It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant [Matt 24:42 - 51], who would not attend his business by candle light, to plead that he had not broad sunshine. The Candle that is set up in us [Prov 20:27] shines bright enough for all our purposes . . . If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do muchwhat as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly. [Text references added to document the sources of Locke's allusions and citations.]
We would be well advised to ponder and heed this counsel. Counsel which, BTW, shows an underlying Judaeo-Christian context that is too often snipped out of relevant discussions. KFkairosfocus_{September 5, 2015
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SS: I see your psychologising projection, which by the mirror principle is inadvertently revealing:
kairosfocus is so frustrated at his inability to change my mind that KF’s beginning to insinuate that I must be evil.
If it were not in the end a sign of sobering issues, I would laugh. Before embarking on some steps of thought, I should note that the very word debate -- which you used above to characterise this tangential comment exchange -- is loaded and inadvertently telling. Echoing Jefferson and behind him Socrates et al: that wicked art that makes the worse seem the better case, therein abetted by rhetoric, the art not of warrant but too often instead of manipulative persuasion. (The art that Ari et al counselled us to reform and take up for purposes of defense in the face of manipulation of opinion and destructive polarisation of communities, rather than prizing for its own value.) No, we do not need more of "debate," we need instead clear thinking and discussion guided by reason. I take up some steps of thought: 1 --> I have no duty or concern to try to persuade, I have simply pointed out factors that a reasonable person would be well advised to consider. 2 --> For instance it is quite obvious that you struggle with something as elementary as the implication of the easily recognised fact that warrant comes in chains, A --> B --> C --> . . . so that we must all face the issue of infinite stepwise regress or circularity or finitely remote first plausibles. 3 --> Of which, only worldview level first plausibles assessed on comparative difficulties, are serious candidates for fundamentally grounding any case. 4 --> So, tracing back, if there is a telling refusal to address such grounding, that means that SS you are at some level aware that your view will not stand up to such, and have been using every rhetorical device to avoid such a dialectic of worldview foundations. 5 --> Given that it is highly likely that you are arguing i/l/o inherently amoral evolutionary materialist scientism and/or its fellow travellers -- it is tellingly patent that you have studiously avoided comparison of acknowledged worldviews -- that is not surprising. 6 --> We take due note of the implication that evolutionary materialism and fellow traveller views are so weak that they cannot even be acknowledged and defended in the presence of informed interlocutors. 7 --> That is a stunning implication of inability to stand up at the bar of comparative difficulties. 8 --> Similarly, it is no accident that you have borrowed a principle without acknowledging its specific theistic context in our civilisation, the Golden Rule. A rule, BTW, that we have it on excellent authority, does not stand on its own . . . a big clue as to the key ethical fallacy at work:
Matt 22:34 But when the Pharisees heard that he [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him,
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
9 --> In wider context, this double-principle of course triggers the telling attempted rebuttal, and who is my neighbour; which leads to the parable of the Good Samaritan, which overturns notions that restrict neighbourliness to in-groups and lock out out-groups. Cf Lk 10:25 - 37. 10 --> It is well worth noting the underlying context, of love to God the Creator, as driving love of neighbour (who in Biblical context is equally made in God's image). The apostle John, in later years, therefore amplifies the teachings of his cousin:
1 Jn 4: 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
11 --> Philosophically, this underscores the issue of the IS-OUGHT gap and its resolution. For, neighbour love does no harm but rather good to neighbour, neighbourliness is rooted in our sharing the common Imago Dei which endows us with the worth and dignity that has legitimate expectations of respect for what we now term core rights, which must be mutual. And, that is how the GR, stamped in our hearts, instructs those who will listen to it. 12 --> But, we equally see the ontological root behind the teaching-principle, a root that philosophical considerations on ethics draw out, through the widely recognised issue of the IS-OUGHT gap. (An issue, SS, that you are suspiciously unwilling to take seriously.) 13 --> Hume argued that there is a gap between IS-IS and OUGHT-OUGHT, that must be addressed, and subsequently in an age dominated by evolutionary materialist scientism, radical secularism and fellow travellers, it is a commonplace notion that it cannot be bridged. Fact. 14 --> It is in this phil context that I applied the chain of warrant issue, starting indeed from the epistemic principle that teaches us morality if we listen and if we are willing to acknowledge that historically, one of the grave challenges of ethics has been that there is a strong tendency to dehumanise or even unduly demonise, stereotype and scapegoat those targetted for distinctly un-neighbourly treatment. 15 --> I listed slavery of Africans, the holocaust of WW II and the ongoing slaughter of hundreds of millions of unborn children, as clear historical and current cases of this problem. (And if you think this is an ad hominem, I suggest rather that it is a good thing that there is sufficient conscience left to be stirred.) 16 --> I also connected it to the history of ideas roots of modern democracy (which itself answers to a whole agenda of accusations against ethical, Judaeo-Christian theism in the community and public square that have been neatly tip-toed by as though they do not exist and need not be corrected). 17 --> This, by pointing out how Locke in ch 2 of his 2nd essay on civil govt -- acknowledged by one and all to lie behind the pivotal US DoI, 1776 -- cited Hooker's use of that rule and by implication, Hooker's onward link to Aristotle as a representative of the reasonable minded man who is not necessarily explicitly thinking in a theistic tradition. 18 --> Now, there is a need to build a bridge, and we see that warrant, by its inherent logic, inexorably -- never mind your resistance to following this logic -- points to the roots of the world and our views on those roots, our worldview first plausibles. 19 --> The logical answer is, that the bridge must lie at foundational level, or else ever after there will be is-is then jump to ought. (And, let me add: I have already, simply, noted a commonplace distinction between the mechanical world ruled by natural law and the world of responsibly free agents subject to moral government as an answer to the talking point you raised that would suggest that rocks and trees and donkeys would therefore have moral duties. I point to Psalm 32:9, which says "Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle . . . " I am also informed by a retired vet here, that some bulls are so unruly that they will rip the nose-ring right out of their noses if you try to use that to control them. The answer to such a bull is, bang, steak for lunch. Control by force may be necessary in such cases, but it is not moral government. [Might makes 'right' is an outright contradiction in terms, and deceitful rhetoric is a violation of the right to informed decision. Cf this discussion on Ac 27.]) 20 --> Where also, we can see that if we follow the logic of evolutionary materialist scientism we face both amorality and the implication as stated by Ruse and Wilson, that morality is an illusion impressed as a mechanism for promoting cooperation and survival, but that carries with it the unacknowledged price tag of letting grand delusion loose in our inner rational life, landing in inescapable self referential incoherence. 21 --> On all of this, we notice on your part a studious skirting. 22 --> But the reasonable man will conclude, on pain of incoherence, that we are responsibly free, rational and morally governed, so there is somewhere a way to bridge is and ought, somewhere that by the chaining of warrant challenge, will lie at the world-root level. The level, SS, that you so studiously, so revealingly want to dismiss and set aside; favouring instead selectively hyperskeptical skeptical rhetoric. 23 --> I again point to what was outlined and predicted in the OP, which prediction you have inadvertently managed to fulfill, in the course of side tracking a discussion and allowing DK to avoid serious engagement of the issue the OP primarily sets on the table, viz the failure of the Euthyphro dilemma in the face of ethical theism's ontological and moral roots that bridge the IS-OUGHT gap:
we are looking at worldview roots and philosophical issues and approaches. Just what a world dominated by scientism is wont to despise, disregard, dismiss. Ill-advisedly, not least as the notion that all serious knowledge is scientific is a self-refuting philosophical claim. We are back to: how can we bridge the IS-OUGHT gap? For which, the only sound answer is, we must find a world-root IS properly capable of bearing the weight of OUGHT, grounding a world of responsibly free, morally governed creatures who genuinely have a claim to justice as they have rights that go beyond might/manipulation and ‘rights’ as convenient rhetorical clubs. That takes us to matters ontological as well as moral, as that is what IS and OUGHT demand. So, in a nutshell, first, the world we experience is rooted in necessary being. For non-being has no causal powers and if there ever were an utter nothing such would therefore forever obtain. Something is unconditioned and primary, tied inextricably to the existence of a world. There is a world-root IS. Is it an infinite regress or a circular, self-causing entity? The latter instantly collapses as something must exist in order to have effects. The former simply postpones the problem, and introduces the super-problem of counting down from infinity to reach an origin for our observed world, in finite successive causal steps . . . . The way to bet is, a finitely remote world-root IS. How can such an IS bridge to OUGHT? Only by being in itself inherently moral, and particularly morally good. In short — as I have noted here at UD ever so many times — the only serious candidate IS to root the world and bridge to/bear the weight of OUGHT is: the inherently good Creator God, a necessary and maximally great world-root being, worthy of ultimate loyalty and our reasonable service of doing the good in light of our evident nature. If you doubt or dismiss, kindly provide and justify a serious alternative: ________________ . . . (Predictably, setting distractors, patently non-serious candidates and side-tracks aside, there will be none.)
24 --> Last but not least, you again project to me the issue of (by suggestion, improperly) accusing you of being evil. I would suggest that I have instead made it plain that we are all finite, fallible, morally struggling, and too often stubbornly ill-willed; something that we need to deal with for the sake of our world and our own souls. KF PS: I add, that one should be willing to take up a balanced 101-level educational process if one is not already sufficiently familiar with an important subject, before forming an opinion and making a decision with potentially serious consequences; e.g. voting. That is supposedly a major function of the media (and before that primary and then secondary level teachers) but notoriously media houses and those who determine education content instead far too often indulge in manipulation and end up leading the public into marches of folly. I must single out Wikipedia by name as an education site whose leadership full well knows what is going on, or full well should know what is going on on ideologically blighted topics, even as they have now utterly undermined traditional encyclopedias, even in CD form. Proper and fair minded, truthful public education is also a duty of key institutions and professions, again too often failed. Historians, of all people, should know that the sound lessons of history were paid for in blood and tears, with huge treasure simply burned up in the process, and that those who fail to learn those sound lessons are doomed to relive the worst chapters. I cite Ac 27 as a case study on how democracy and corporate/community governance can go sadly wrong . . . and yes, I am speaking straight to our civilisation at this time. Historians, you are the last line, stand to! (If you fail, all will be lost.) For what it's worth, here is my in a nutshell on assessing news, views and the like: http://www.angelfire.com/pro/kairosfocus/resources/straight_or_spin.htm (This is a key aspect of my response to the debate-manipulative rhetoric problem. Another is this, on straight thinking in a nutshell: http://www.angelfire.com/pro/kairosfocus/resources/Straight_Thinking.pdf )kairosfocus_{September 5, 2015
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MNY: First, this is not a theology discussion [philosophy and ethics may reckon with traditions, but are going to be looking at foundational principles and issues]. Second, even so I have taken time to pause and give you brief indicators as to where you can begin to form a better balanced view on what the Judaeo-Christian scriptural tradition actually directly and consistently teaches on what you seem to imagine is haram. I add to the above, this counsel from Rom 12:
Paul, Rom 12:1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers,[a] by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your [reasonable service i.e.] spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
And yes, reasonable service and spiritual worship are both renderings of the same Gk phrase, showing the inextricable joining of what you think is irreconcilably separate. (The solution is that true enlightenment -- as opposed to wise- in- our- own- eyes willful and foolish rebellion that erects strongholds of fallacies that lock out the knowledge of God -- starts with him who is the way the truth and the live, Rational Communicative Wisdom Himself, and with a reckoning on the force of what was presented to the Athenian intellectual elites (cf. Ac 17, i/l/o here), noting the specific point of historical anchorage put on the table on the strength of the 500 witnesses. As Jesus noted in the Sermon on the Mount, the eye is the lamp of the body, so if your eyes are good you will be enlightened, but if your eyes [of understanding] are bad, your body will be filled with darkness.) That is sufficient for any reasonable discussion on what is a tangent now tainted with improper dismissiveness. KFkairosfocus_{September 5, 2015
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The "forbidden" fruit is a common name for it, as far as I know. You are grasping at straws. You are arguing against scripture. When scripture says " But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Then it is unthinkable that you just change the meaning to "False, twisted “knowledge” or “wisdom” that leads to endarkenment is what is condemned," You do not even mention good and evil! It is not what it says. And that is just so typical elitist, 'I don't have to deal with the straightforward truth because, I am so sophisticated'. That, religion is not for common people, but for learned people who understand about "neccessary being", and all that sophistication, and how sentences mean the direct opposite of what it says, because of this or that smart argument. It's the genius of scripture that it predicted you saying to desire wisdom in regards to knowledge of good and evil, just like Eve said. "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. kairosfocus "No, wisdom, reason, knowledge, truth, the right and the good alike are not forbidden but instead are praised, set as desirable goals, and seen as the fruit of sound growth under God in accordance with true enlightenment ." And also the "enlightenment" “Satan fashions himself into a messenger of light” (2 Cor. 11:3, 14) Aren't you too close for comfort to what scripture condemns? Shouldn't you be somewhat more circumspect, and accept the straightforward meaning that knowledge of good and evil is forbidden? Isn't it obviously odious to propose the worth of man as fact, and then inevitably start calculating worth (4 -2) x 3 = worth 6. The minus uh..to get rid of them, the multiplication eh.. to have them reproduce, we get rid of these 2 men and produce 4 children. That's okay, it's increasing net worth.mohammadnursyamsu_{September 4, 2015
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SS, at this point, with all due respect things like the chain of warrant are not on trial, you are. Likewise, it is patent that do to neighbour as you would be done by teaches morality well but cannot ontologically found it, where some sobering history on dehumanising to abuse shows the urgency of such grounding. And so the verdict is in, you can only play the I declare rhetorical victory card. Sad, in the end. KFkairosfocus_{September 4, 2015
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I think this debate between kairosfocus and myself is coming to its effective end. Our arguments are beginning to become repetitious; I’ve seen all KF has, and all I can do is remind him of why he is wrong. I’m sure KF feels exactly the same way about me and mine. Now kairosfocus is so frustrated at his inability to change my mind that KF’s beginning to insinuate that I must be evil. That is a sign that this needs to end. Wide-spread belief in kairosfocus’s “world-root-level” grounding of morality does absolutely no good for preventing evil. It did not stop the thousands of Germans who committed the Holocaust, or the thousands of Polish, Russian, French, Dutch etc. collaborators who were accomplices in that crime. It did not stop 19th century pogroms in Imperial Russia. It didn’t stop the African Slave Trade or Southern lynchings or Jim Crow laws. It didn’t stop the Wars of Religion in Europe, nor mass-murder of Jews in medieval Germany, nor witch burnings, heretic burnings, and on and on and on. It doesn’t stop Christians from getting abortions today, a problem so great that some churches and denominations struggle to find ways to minister to members who’ve gotten abortions. It doesn’t stop conservative politicians who take money away from programs intended to serve poor children and mothers so they can lower taxes for the wealthy. Strangly; “godless” Europeans have fewer abortions than we Religious Americans do. And they take better care of their children too. Are those related facts? Probably. In any event, belief in kairosfocus’s “world-root-level” grounding of morality does absolutely no good for preventing any of these evils. Is the solution to the crisis of abortion to proclaim “Ontology!”? Will that change hearts and minds? Would my alternative, a moral system based on the mandate of the Golden Rule and founded on Reason and Facts of Nature do better? I think so because it does not try to leverage beliefs in deities. Deities have been and are used to justify all manner of horror because “God said so, and God’s ways are mysterious.” All those horrors I mentioned above were supported by religious leaders in the name of their God. And now we have Godly believers who won’t take their children to doctors, who throw acid at little children, who destroy antiquities, who induce children to become sex-slaves and child-soldiers and suicide bombers, who go to the funerals of fallen soldiers and cheer the weapons that killed them. Think of all the conflict zones in the world; how many are driven by religious disagreements? Most are. I cannot think of a war in all of history where religious leaders on either side (much less BOTH sides!) were like: “Hold on there! This is wrong!” Mark Twain’s War Prayer got it right. My morality replaces God with Reason and Facts. Oh for sure people can and will dispute Reason and Facts (just like they do theistic ideas) but because reason and facts are accessible to all, there is no claiming that “Reason’s ways are mysterious”; reasons ways are reasonable by definition. Facts are facts. My alternative is not perfect, but that’s not the standard we need meet. We just need better. And boy! Do we need better! Kairosfocus is part of the team that runs UD (or so it appears) so I will give him the last word on this thread. Thank you all for your kind attention. sean s.sean samis_{September 4, 2015
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MNY, I simply invite the drawing of the contrast between your assertions and the clear teachings of scripture. I do so in part as a service to you, as it seems your understanding is influenced by the haram concept; per your emphasis on "forbidden." KFkairosfocus_{September 4, 2015
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It is straightforward understanding of scripture, you are forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Do not do that, says God. You turn scripture on it's head and in effect say that eating from the tree of knowlege of good and evil is praised! That good and evil is properly attributed to the soul of somebody, makes good and evil into a matter of opinion, because the existence of the soul is a matter of opinion. It all makes sense that way. The soul chooses, the goodness and evil is in the soul, God then judges the soul. God judges who you are as making the decisions you did. God preserves the soul, God does not preserve the results of the decisions, the results turn to dust.mohammadnursyamsu_{September 4, 2015
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MNY:
It is forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It means you are forbidden to regard good and evil as fact.
A basic error of eisegesis, projecting interpretation into a scriptural text. The issue in view in that text was trusting obedience to God vs disobedience driven by mistrust of God (who is portrayed elsewhere in scripture as Reason himself, as all-wise and all-knowing so inherently wisdom, knowledge and reason are virtues or goods) and believing instead a manipulative sales talk. False, twisted "knowledge" or "wisdom" that leads to endarkenment is what is condemned, e.g.:
Solomon, Prov. 1:1 The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel: 2 To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, 3 to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity; 4 to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth— 5 Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, 6 to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles. 7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.
. . . or:
James, Jas 3:13 Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. 14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. 15 This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16 For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. 17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. 18 And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
. . . and again:
Paul, Eph 4:17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self,[f] which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness . . . . 5: 8 . . . at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), 10 and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.
No, wisdom, reason, knowledge, truth, the right and the good alike are not forbidden but instead are praised, set as desirable goals, and seen as the fruit of sound growth under God in accordance with true enlightenment. Indeed to live soberly, responsibly, even joyfully by the light of truth and right through the power of him who is Truth Himself, is seen as flowing from spiritual enlightenment, liberation and renewal of our minds, and is specifically termed our reasonable service. KF PS: To discuss good or evil etc, we first have to resort to language, which pivots on distinctions and distinct identity. Thus the triple laws are always there. And as long as good, evil, truth, falsity etc are distinct, these laws apply. Indeed, let me cite some more:
Isaiah, Isa 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! 21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!
. . . and:
Paul, 1 Cor 14:7 If even lifeless instruments, such as the flute or the harp, do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played? 8 And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? 9 So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air. 10 There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning, 11 but if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me. 12 So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church.
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It is forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It means you are forbidden to regard good and evil as fact. Yet, you advocate it as a virtue. The good and evil is attributed to the spirit, and the existence of the spirit is a matter of opinion. The law of non contradiction of identity, you are applying it in a wrong way. It's wrong and absurd that you categorize kindness and cruelty together with Jupiter and Saturn, that the law of non contradiction applies to all. What is in people's soul is a categorically different issue from what substances are in their body. Kindness and cruelty are matters of opinion, the substances in their body are matters of fact.mohammadnursyamsu_{September 4, 2015
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F/N2 (attn SS): Just on a point where SS indulges an attempted turnabout accusation to deflect the point that acknowledging neighbour status with the neighbour being seen as being of equal value and a bearer of rights is not to be assumed:
KF: 9 –> Further to this, on many critical moral questions over the years and currently, there has been a pattern of refusing to acknowledge the humanity of the targetted others, whether black people kidnapped and enslaved, or Polish and Jewish “mice” targetted by the presumed superior Aryan superman “cat” in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, to the denial of the personhood and right to equal protection under law of the unborn today, which has led tot he state-backed slaughter of hundreds of millions. This last now reaching the stage of Mengele like organ harvesting and sale for tainted ‘research.’ SS: This is a red-herring verging on ad hominem. I have always acknowledged the humanity of Poles, Jews, unborn children, gays, lesbians, transsexuals, Muslims, atheists, etc. etc. These valid and painful topics have nothing to tell us about where morality should be grounded.
Of course , what is really going on there is that SS has been trying to push the golden rule into a role it cannot fulfill. It is an epistemic, educational device that allows us to see that if we have reasonable expectations to be treated fairly, justly etc, then others of like mature and moral worth are to be accorded the same respect as we find ourselves to be owed; a respect that of course reflects our evident nature and ought not be warped into the idea that as we hold power and say that the tail of a sheep is a leg, henceforth a sheep has five legs so there; on pain of gaol or loss of livelihood or stripping you of your children under false colours of law if you dare object in the name of conscience or good sense. But, patently, such an epistemic principle cannot provide the ontological basis for such rights, for such duties, for such moral value, and for such equality of nature and being. Indeed, it assumes them and invites that exploration. However, for several weeks, SS has been indulging a distractive exercise by pouncing on my citation of how Locke used the GR through citing Hooker, and has tried to suggest that we need go no farther than this, for practical purposes. Let me add, how I have augmented the Hooker cite in Locke in his 2nd treatise on Govt, Ch 2, to clarify . . . of course studiously ignored:
. . . if I cannot but wish [--> accurately perceiving my own moral worth and so my rights] to receive good, even as much at every man’s hands, as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire which is undoubtedly in other men [--> accurately perceiving that here are others of like nature] . . . my desire, therefore, to be loved of my equals in Nature, as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to themward fully the like affection. [--> notice, imposes, by the sense of my own moral state and the perception of others who are as I am, I have reciprocity of duties of care in community] From which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn for direction of life no man is ignorant
[--> these teach us so that we come to knowledge of morality: warranted, credibly true beliefs; of course, this is not the basis for that warrant, that lies in a world-foundational, world-root, world-source IS that inherently grounds OUGHT. And therein lieth a deep root of hyperskepticism on this, for if we are inherently -- by patent facts of our nature as responsibly free and rational, valuable beings -- under moral government and moral law, it points straight to a world root level Lawgiver and Governor. That is, to the inherently good Creator God, a necessary and maximally great being worthy of ultimate loyalty and the reasonable service of doing the good in accord with our nature]
. . . [Hooker then continues, citing Aristotle in The Nicomachean Ethics, Bk 8:] as namely, That because we would take no harm, we must therefore do none; That since we would not be in any thing extremely dealt with, we must ourselves avoid all extremity in our dealings; That from all violence and wrong we are utterly to abstain, with such-like [--> being core principles of law derived from reciprocity and my sense of my own worth and quite evident to such as Aristotle] . . . [Eccl. Polity, preface, Bk I, “ch.” 8, p.80]
In response, I have cited several notorious historical cases and one case now in progress. Cases that show that there is a history of refusing to acknowledge neighbour status, equality of rights, and equality of nature. African slaves, notoriously, were deemed racial inferiors over the past several centuries. Hitler, in Mein Kampf, spoke of how cats have no sympathetic views to mice [as a part of making a case of unequal nature justifying Aryan Man racial superman ideology and the associated targetting of inferiors], and from 1939 made Poland a principal target of the holocaust, murdering 5 million poles, 3 million of them Jews. Yes, half the Jewish part of the holocaust was Polish Jewry. We can add 25 million Russians to the usual holocaust reckoning, net of the was it 5 - 8 millions killed on the battlefield, that was at least death in battle. There was a plan to starve the Ukraine to death. Today, we live in the midst of the worst holocaust in history, one that dwarfs both what Hitler et al did and what he Communists have done. And a major talking point used to warp law, the state, courts etc in its support, is that the unborn are not persons within the meaning of the law, and so are not to be protected, starting with their life. So, we see that there is a challenge of warrant for the GR, which requires moving on to a deeper level. One, that will require bridging IS and OUGHT. One, that points tot he chain of warrant issue already addressed but obviously being brushed aside. One, for which SS obviously has no cogent answer, so he has resorted tot he tactic of the projective turnabout accusation, I am to be dismissed as setting up a red herring distractor and even an attack to the man. (Perhaps, this last is because it seems likely SS supports abortion on demand and resents that I classify it with the holocaust and slavery as examples of rejecting the neighbour-status of targetted groups. Sorry if it hurts, but that is a matter of history and of the current moral issue no 1 confronting our civilisation, ongoing holocaust and linked corruption of institutions and thought through mass bloodguilt, including now Mengele like corruption of medicine. (Look, I had to face a wake-up call in recent weeks on this issue myself, I had become far too silent on it -- which is enabling behaviour. God, forgive me for that.) Obviously, there is no answer to X is not my neighbour, but going tot he roots of IS and moral worth, thus bridging the IS-OUGHT gap. Which then brings to bear the general force of the principle that warrant chains, and confronts us with the choice: infinite regress, or circularity, or finitely remote first plausibles. Where question-begging fails instantly, and infinite regress of warrant cannot be traversed by the finite and fallible. So, we find that warrant traces to not just some point in common for those who will be in the circle we are willing to acknowledge, but to world-foundations level or world-roots level, and thus to finitely remote first plausibles. if we are to warrant a bridging of IS and OUGHT, that is where it is to be sought. Just as to found Geometry as a first and exemplary mathematical, logical discipline, Euclid went back and back until he hit on the axiomatic level. Not everything is deductive, so warrant needs to be broader than deductive proof, i.e. inductive arguments, inference to best explanation, the question of moral certainty, credibility of the senses and of conscious inner life etc are a part of the picture. And so, we are at the pivotal point here. There is already a point by point addressing of issues, but there is intransigence based on polarisation and refusal to acknowledge the nature of warrant, multiplied by the sort of rhetorical tactics I just now have had to address and expose. But in the end, as Aristotle outlined in The Rhetoric Bk I Ch 2, arguments become persuasive due to the impact of emotions, appeals to seemingly credible sources or presenters, or to the force of fact and logic. Emotions are no better than their underlying perceptions, judgements and expectations, no authority is better than his facts and logic. So, in the end, though it is the least persuasive lever in popular discussion, I will go to the only level that actually truly directly warrants, facts and linked reasoning. I take my stand on facts and logic, here informed by the chain of warrant issue and the history that demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt why the GR is not foundational, though it is a key educational principle that teaches those willing to learn. Let us see if SS and others of like ilk will be willing to do better. KFkairosfocus_{September 4, 2015
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F/N: Just now, I commented in the denial thread in response to SB. I believe this comment is also appropriate here, as the issues seem to be latent drivers of the exchanges we are seeing. The fallacy of the selectively hyperskeptical, closed mind starting with first principles of right reason has to be exposed and turned from if progress is to be made: ________________ >>SB, 15:
You are supposed to know that a slice of pizza cannot exceed a whole pizza. [ --> Cf here.] You are supposed to know that the laws of non-contradiction and identity are infallibly true and that you can be absolutely certain about it. You are supposed to know that nothing can change or come into existence unless an outside agent causes it to happen. You are supposed to know that it is wrong to slice up babies like pieces of meat while they are still alive and sell them. If you don’t know these things, then you are not a rational person. There are millions of things that we can misunderstand and be wrong about, but self-evident truths are not among them . . . . My perception of logical truths is infallible for many reasons. I will list only three: First, I recognize the immediate absurdity of denying them. If the law of identity was not certain, Jupiter could be Saturn. You could be me. I am infallibly certain that Jupiter is not, or cannot be, Saturn. I am infallibly certain that you cannot be me. If the law of non-contradiction was not true, kindness could be cruelty, cowardice could be courage, and, life could be death. I am infallibly certain that these conditions and qualities are incompatible. Second, I can identify and recognize errors and flawed thinking only because there is an unchanging infallible logical standard that exposes them as errors.. I know the difference between a patently true statement and a patently false statement. If someone tells me that I am seven feet tall, I know infallibly that they have made an error because I know the difference between the truth and what was claimed. I am certain that truth is not error.. Third, I know that my internal logic is perfectly consistent with the logic of the real world. The psychological portion of the law of logic tells me this: If it rains, the streets will get wet.. This fact is perfectly consistent with the laws of nature: when it rains, the streets get wet. I am infallibly certain that my internal logic corresponds perfectly to the logic of the real world. That is why I am also certain that a piece of pizza is less than a whole pie. (I also know that you are infallibly certain of same, which is why I am harsh with you).
Aptly summarised. I suggest once we have a world W and a distinct thing A in it, we see a world-partition: W = {A|~A} In that context the three core first principles of right reason are self-evidently and jointly manifest. LOI: A is A LNC: A is not simultaneously ~A in the same semse of partition. LEM: For some x in W, x is in A X-OR in ~A. (X-OR, I find useful to introduce; it denotes exclusive or, AUT not VEL. In short x in W means that x must be in A or ~A, and it cannot be in both, it is in A or it is in ~A, but not both nor neither.) Once we see this outline, it shows the underlying issue: distinct identity of A, I have usually spoken of A = a bright red ball on a table. One of those medicine/exercise balls is a good case. The old fashioned baby's first toy ball or a traditional cricket ball count. (These days, I see two-tone cricket balls and white ones. I suspect the two-tone will tell a batsman or a videographer a lot about bowling action, and will feed databases.) If someone baulks at this, there is no hope of going on to other self-evident truths or exploring a weak form principle of sufficient reason by which once A is [or even is not], we may ask and investigate in thought or empirically, why A is [or is not] and whether/how it came to be [or, to not be]. This of course brings up possible/ impossible being, possible worlds, non-being or nothingness, and contingent/necessary being. Where also, truth says of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not and reasonable warrant allows us to see that a warranted, credibly true belief is knowledge. From such, we may then learn about causes, enabling on/off causal factors (via considering a fire) and their effects/ impacts. With such a mental toolbox, we can then begin to explore on a basis of clear, insightful and reasonable thought. (Cf here on in context: http://nicenesystheol.blogspot.com/2010/11/unit-2-gospel-on-mars-hill-foundations.html#u2_bld_wvu ) But, too often, that is exactly what too many have been indoctrinated to fear and be repelled by. Of course, the better to be manipulated by those who are confident they can achieve message dominance and institutional dominance. But, muddle-headedness and manipulation have a highly predictable outcome: marches of folly and evil leading straight over the cliff to ruin. Personal, and civilisational. Our civilisation is hell-bent on folly and great evil, with the ongoing abortion holocaust of many hundreds of millions as exhibit A. A is A, and A leads to ruin, so the chief aim of the sane and sensible, sober-minded person in our day will be to turn back before it is too late. And signs aplenty point to the crumbling cliff's edge leading to an abyss that we are heading straight towards. Whom the gods would destroy, first they rob of reason. And, the god of this world has come to steal, to kill and to destroy. But, there is One who came to redeem, bless, transform and enable us to have life to the full. (Cf. here on.) Whose report will we believe, and why? Or, will we indulge selective hyperskepticism as usual, leading to incoherence, folly and evils that ought to have been averted or should be reformed? Have we come to a point where as a civilisation, the light in us as we imagine it is in reality darkness and deception, a Plato's Cave shadow show put on for us by those who dominate messages and institutions, pretending to be guardians of science the only begetter of truth? (Where that core proposition of scientism is patently self-refuting and so, false. But that does not prevent it from being drummed into us by those who hope to profit by today's updated multimedia living colour shadow shows presented as though they were truth.) Again, whose report will we believe, why? KF>> _________________ It is time to correct basic errors of thought that are now pandemic in our day. KFkairosfocus_{September 4, 2015
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MNY, kindly cf the just above. KFkairosfocus_{September 3, 2015
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SS, the nub of it is that you need to start with the chain of warrant question, and until you face it squarely, no further progress is possible for you. So, again, you put up claim A. Why should I accept A? Well B, some frame of evidence or reasons etc, leads to A, warrants it. Let's take it that it actually does, and that I am not playing selective hyperskeptical rhetoric games. But B, summed up, is another claim. Why accept it, then? C. And so forth. Yes, I know, you have dismissed this, you are tired of seeing it, you don't think anything of it. It is not on trial, you are, SS. The chain is there for any reasonable person to see, to dismiss it speaks ill of you, not of it. The implication is that the chain faces one of the three options above: infinite regress, circular claims, finitely remote first plausibles. Circles that beg questions will go nowhere, fast. Finite, fallible, morally struggling, too often blindly stubborn people cannot traverse an infinite chain of warrants in steps, that fails also. So, the reality is, we face finite chains of warrant, going back to first plausibles. In a world where there are alternative possible faith points. So we evaluate on comparative difficulties across factual adequacy, coherence (logical and dynamical) and explanatory balance and power: neither simplistic nor an ad hoc patchwork. The issue is, which faith-point, why. This holds for any chain of warrant, including moral ones. In that case, you have tried to suggest that oh we can all agree on the Golden Rule. The problem is, we don't, and very important cases have hinged on whether X is my neighbour with reasonable expectations to be respected as I expect to be. Just ask the Polish and Jewish "mice" facing Hitler's "cats" c. 1939. The GR can teach those willing to be instructed, but it is not foundational. Which, has been said several times. The only place where chains of warrant properly terminate is at world root level, with first plausibles. In this case, on pain of facing the IS-OUGHT gap. Now, I know, you have dismissed all of this. Here is Kocher on something you and others tempted to argue as you have (especially on chains of warrant) should ponder:
Regardless of whether we would like to hallucinate a different world, or wish there were a different world, or wish there were different consequences, or argue for the validity of subjective experience over reality, or argue that subjective experience is the only reality; the conventionally defined sane (conventionally sane as was defined in this country before the borderline Sixties) method of interacting with that world is the only one that works over time . . . . The problem, especially since the borderline Sixties, is that increasingly fewer people understand the difference between the various forms of irrefutability or the importance of basic reality in refutation. Within the borderline psychotic liberalism of the past several decades, the various forms of irrefutability have come to have intellectual equivalence. Mental disorder and psychotic levels of denial have come to have a certified validity because of their irrefutability--even to the point of being misinterpreted as being a powerful form of intellectuality. It has become common for people who routinely engage in chronic psychotic levels of denial to consider themselves as being mental powerhouses, and to be considered by others as being mental powerhouses, because no one can break through their irrationality. This is often supported by a self-referencing congratulatory inner voice which says, "(guffaw) He REALLY didn't have an answer for that one!" And they are correct. He didn't have an answer. And neither will anyone else.
KF PS: I will respond to select points in due course as footnotes for the onlooker. PPS: Again, I will not be drawn into a further tangential discussion on matters of theology when ontology is not being properly addressed, and even the issue of chains of warrant. I will note for the concerned onlooker, that heaven vs hell is no more central to right/wrong than gaols are to why certain acts are properly deemed criminal and subject to sanctions in law. The same onlooker will be able to scroll up to the OP and see why the attempt to accuse God of imposing might makes right fails . . . but how it fails is not convenient rhetorically so above we see yet more of red herring tangents led away to strawman caricatures, now backed up by the pretence that repeating an already corrected error drumbeat fashion undoes the correction.kairosfocus_{September 3, 2015
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@kairosfocus Simplicity, practicality, consistency with common discourse, consistency with creationism, a unified conceptual scheme. The meanings of fact and opinion I provided score very high on all those criteria. The fact itself is the effect. When somebody asks the facts about what happened, then the job is to simply make an exact 1 to 1 model of what happened. What happened is the cause, the model of it is the effect of that cause. The model is in essence forced by what it is sought to be modelled. That is an explanation of fact that is simple, practical, in line with common discourse, creationism etc. Facts have the logic of being forced. Opinions have the logic of freedom. Simple, straightforward. Facts apply to the creation, opinion applies to the creator. Again, that is the way the logic of morality, subjectivity, functions, in common discourse at present. You want to reinvent common discourse? Have people speak differently, with a different structure of logic? That's maybe philosophically interesting, but practically an impossibly tall order. People might discuss whether it is neccessary to believe in a neccessary being, and maybe something will come of it. But in daily life, they use the logic of creationism, with 2 categories, opinion and fact.mohammadnursyamsu_{September 3, 2015
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Regarding God’s might making Him right; This is what the Catholic Church had us praying regularly when I was a kid:
Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven, and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and amend my life. Amen.
Clearly Heaven and Hell was very important then. Has God shut Hell down? When was that announced? sean s.sean samis_{September 3, 2015
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kairosfocus @182: Excellent! Good news! Now when that guy who hangs out on the corner tells me that I’m going to Hell, I can refer him to you for a correction. sean s.sean samis_{September 3, 2015
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kairosfocus @177: I thought sorting through 36 points would take a while, but since most are repetitious and nothing is new, it went quicker than I thought.
1 –> First, it is not merely a legitimate view and it is not merely the view of an idiosyncratic bloggist who can be brushed aside. The IS-OUGHT gap is a generally acknowledged major issue in ethics.
No one suggests brushing the topic or your position aside, and disagreeing with you does not amount to those either. “The IS-OUGHT gap” may be a “generally acknowledged major issue in ethics” but that does not mean your solution is correct. I believe mine is correct and you are “brushing it aside”.
2 –> In essence, Hume captures the challenge that people tend to argue IS, IS then — without a bridge — jump to OUGHT, OUGHT, leaving such without starting warrant, or grounding at the level of the root of reality.
I understand the problem; I also understand that the solution was known before Hume wrote a single about it.
3 –> In fact, many (especially materialists) hold and even deem it an unquestionable fact that it is unbridgeable, so I am pointing out (with others) that a world-root IS that is also simultaneously of such character as to ground OUGHT, is an adequate and satisfactory answer.
I don’t care whether others hold this “gap” unbridgeable or not; those are only their opinions, nothing more. It is bridgeable; it was bridgeable before Hume was even a twinkle in his father’s eyes.
4 –> That is, there is a possibility to bridge the ontological and the moral at the root of reality; requiring a necessary being of particular character, i.e. Inherently good and maximally great.
The ontological and the moral cannot be bridged at the root of reality because beings existing at or near the root of reality have no moral duties; they owe no moral obligations. Do quantum particles, atoms, molecules, or the four forces have moral duties? No. Founding morality there is absurd. In fact most of the beings that exist have no moral duties. Do rocks? Stars? Galaxies? No. That would be absurd. Morality connects to reality only when beings have volition, knowledge, foresight, and reason. Upon that combination, the ontological and the moral connect. Since no bridge at the “root of reality” is sensible, no “being of particular character, i.e. Inherently good and maximally great.” is NECESSARY for the sake of morality Because reality is causal, some necessary, self-sufficient being must exist; but beyond their necessary and self-sufficient existence, no other attribute is known to be required of this being; in need not have a mind; it need not be able to form plans, intentions, goals, desires, etc. It need only exist. Nothing else is needed. That is sufficient.
5 –> Hence, too, the significance of the preliminary point that were there ever an utter nothing, such would forever obtain, so that there is a world now is best explained on something unconditioned that always was, something that also is not under the insuperable problems of infinite contingent chains and/or suggestions of circular causation.
Agreed.
6 –> Further to this, there is no possibility of so grounding it at a level that is later than that, as that falls right into the IS-IS, OUGHT-OUGHT gap problem.
Grounding morality at the “root level” creates absurdities as I have shown. Obligation attaches when volition, knowledge, foresight, and reason combine in individual creatures. Only at that point is any bridging needed or even sensible.
7 –> As has been repeatedly pointed out to you, but studiously ignored or further distorted and dismissed, the Golden Rule is not at world foundation level, it distracts focus from the world root level by highlighting a principle that teaches us morality premised on knowledge that we have moral worth and legitimate moral expectations of others [= rights], and implicitly recognise that there are others who are as we are.
As has been repeatedly pointed out to you, but studiously ignored by you, that bridging “at world foundation level” creates absurdity. Insistence upon this absurd requirement distracts focus from moral issues with nebulous philosophical digressions.
8 –> In short you have been insistently changing the subject from grounding morality to learning it and acknowledging the legitimate claims of others who are as we are. But, epistemology is not a substitute for ontology.
Challenging one grounding by offering a better alternative is in no sense “changing the subject”; the grounding IS the subject. Accusing me of “changing the subject” is a red-herring intended to obstruct discussion and comparison of your proposed grounding versus mine.
9 –> Further to this, on many critical moral questions over the years and currently, there has been a pattern of refusing to acknowledge the humanity of the targetted others, whether black people kidnapped and enslaved, or Polish and Jewish “mice” targetted by the presumed superior Aryan superman “cat” in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, to the denial of the personhood and right to equal protection under law of the unborn today, which has led tot he state-backed slaughter of hundreds of millions. This last now reaching the stage of Mengele like organ harvesting and sale for tainted ‘research.’
This is a red-herring verging on ad hominem. I have always acknowledged the humanity of Poles, Jews, unborn children, gays, lesbians, transsexuals, Muslims, atheists, etc. etc. These valid and painful topics have nothing to tell us about where morality should be grounded.
10 –> So, we see the red herring distractor of pouncing on the golden rule then chasing off away to the strawman caricature that epistemology can answer to ontology.
KF, you are the red herring distractor. Your 11 is repetitious. Your 12 is mere argumentation.
13 –> Another strawman. At no point have I ever argued that the grounding of morality is a matter of simple self-evidence. It is not, and no serious person argues that.
If your “world root level grounding” is not self-evident, then my challenge to it is appropriate.
14 –> What I and others have pointed out, is that we have a faculty, conscience, which informs us that we are under the government of moral law, a faculty that many materialists imagine is delusional, as already cited, let me again clip Ruse and Wilson (cf. 48above) as typical exemplars:
[long citation omitted.]
14 –> The problem with such is of course, that once a major faculty of mind is deemed illusory, as it is inextricably entangled with other such things, perceptions, judgements, reasoning and warranting, etc, we are letting grand delusion loose in the human inner life.
What Ruse and Wilson write is of no importance to me. You believe in Proof from Authority, I deny it. One of the nice things about having no religion is that I have no pope, prophet, or priest to tell me what I’m supposed to believe. Ruse and Wilson’s opinions are theirs. And I freely ignore them, as do other materialists. To the point: the faculty of conscience is not delusional, but exactly how it works is not proved. Conscience is “inextricably entangled with other such things, perceptions, judgements, reasoning and warranting, etc.” We are under the government of moral law; agreed. None of this helps your case even in the tiniest way. My position is entirely compatible with the validity of conscience. Your 15 is meaningless. Your 16 is repetitious. Your 17 through 30 are all repetitious.
31 –> Mechanical reality is governed by mechanical law, responsibly free creatures would be governed by moral law, which they would learn from the signalling candle within of conscience and the implications of recognising that others are as they are, are their neighbours to be treated with the same respect.
I’m not even sure what this is about. It seems to be an endorsement of the GR. Your 32 is just argumentation.
>>Third; if morality imposes no obligation except on those creatures capable of appreciating and responding to obligations, then morality needs no grounding deeper than the truth of those creatures’ nature and existence.>>
33 –> And that nature and existence trace directly to the world roots (as in imago dei), thank you for conceding the key point.
Then you agree that grounding morality in our possession of volition, knowledge, foresight, and reason is sufficient? No grounding deeper is necessary or desirable. Thank you.
34 –> This assumes rather than grounds, moral obligation, and speaks rather to how we learn than to how such comes to be. It is grounding that is on the table: the ontological is prior to the epistemological.
It is grounding that is on the table. But what is shown is that grounding at the world root level creates absurdities. Your 35 is mere argumentation. Your 36 is mere argumentation. And that’s it. That’s all there is. Nothing new. sean s.sean samis_{September 3, 2015
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SS, Heaven/hell are not core aspects of Christian moral thought, no more than a gaol is at the centre of defining what is criminal, why. That is yet another strawman, at this stage, no surprise. KF PS: Our whole universe of contingent facts stands in demonstration of another error on your part.kairosfocus_{September 3, 2015
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