Moral Subjectivism = Nazis Were Doing Good and We Shouldn’t Have Stopped Them

_{William Murray

November 17, 2013

Intelligent Design}

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Under moral subjectivism, good and bad are entirely subjective commodities. This means that if I think a thing is right, it is as right as is possible for moral right to exist. The principle of subjective morality authorizes an act as “morally good” if the person that performed the act believed it to be the right thing to do; that is the only framework available to moral subjectivism for an evaluation of “moral” and “immoral”. It is strictly a relationship between the actor/believer and the act.
Therefore, as long as Hitler believed his actions right, and those who carried out his orders believed similarly, then to the full extent that the principle of moral subjectivism has to authorize anything as “moral” or “good”, the holocaust was a good and moral event, and moral subjectivists must (rationally speaking) admit this. (I doubt they will, though.)

The way that moral relativists attempt to wiggle out of this is by saying that in their opinion, Hitler was behaving immorally. Unfortunately, they have no rational basis for making this statement. It is a category error, a non-sequitur under moral subjectivism, offered as if there was some means by which to pass judgement on what others consider to be right. Their principle necessarily endorses the actions of the Nazis as morally good as long as they (the Nazis) believed what they were doing was right; what anyone else thought or thinks is entirely irrelevant. The most that the principle of moral subjectivism logically allows subjectivists to say is that gassing the Jews would not be morally good for them personally to do, but that it was morally good for the Nazis to do.

Furthermore, since the principle of moral subjectivism offers no valid reason to intervene in the moral affairs of others (since it is entirely subjective and there is no objective obligation or authority to do so), and since moral relativists must admit that nothing morally wrong was occurring in the first place (in fact, only moral good was likely happening, since the Nazis believed what they were doing was right), they must hold that we should not have interfered with the Nazis.

Thus, moral subjectivism necessary means that the Nazis were doing good and we shouldn’t have stopped them.

Comments

WJM: Just out of interest: can you give any evidence for the existence of objective morality ? Please note the word: evidence, ie: something you can point at and say: that is evidence for the existence of objective morality.
I don't agree with your idiosyncratic, self-referential definition of the word "evidence".William J Murray_{November 17, 2013
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Again, that’s an illogical connection. I can quite easily look at someone and say both (a) what you’re doing is wrong and must be stopped, and (b) I have only my own moral beliefs to support that position. The fact that someone else believes they’re not doing wrong doesn’t override my own moral beliefs, whether or not I have an objective standard for them.
Pardon me for responding to myself, but this might be just restating the obvious disagreement we're having. Let me sharpen it: the fact that they believe they're doing right doesn't override my own moral beliefs because I've compared their beliefs to my own, and (unsurprisingly) concluded that mine are better. Why are mine better? Again, it goes back to my preconceptions--liberty good, murder bad, etc. Are those ultimately truly objective? I don't think so. But that doesn't diminish them in my eyes.Pro Hac Vice_{November 17, 2013
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WJM, to continue:
If people behaved rationally in accordance with their fundamental assumptions and principles, and they believed that morality was only a set of subjective preferences people have, why would they then feel obligated and authorized to intervene when others were doing something they considered immoral?
Let’s operationalize this. I’m an MR, and I think I behave rationally (more or less) in accordance with my fundamental assumptions. I would in fact feel obligated and authorized to intervene in some situations, like calling 911 if I saw a burglary in progress (but not to intervene in a stranger’s TV choices or pie preference). I don’t understand why this seems impossible to you. I believe that it is morally wrong to burglarize a home. I believe that it’s morally right to protect a stranger from harm. The fact that I can’t identify a truly objective standard for those beliefs doesn’t mean that I don’t have them, or that I should logically be unwilling to act on them. If we assume that the burglar believes it’s morally correct to burglarize a home, why would that change my decision?
The self-proclaimed moral relativist knows, on some level, that morality is not just a set of subjective personal preferences. If they truly thought that and lived it as if true, then an adult abusing their child or a group ridiculing someone for their skin color or sexual orientation would no more affect them than watching someone order and eat a pie they disliked. So what? That’s their personal preference.
Again, that’s an illogical connection. I can quite easily look at someone and say both (a) what you’re doing is wrong and must be stopped, and (b) I have only my own moral beliefs to support that position. The fact that someone else believes they’re not doing wrong doesn’t override my own moral beliefs, whether or not I have an objective standard for them.Pro Hac Vice_{November 17, 2013
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WJM, Thanks for your responses. First, I agree that people often hold irrational or inconsistent beliefs. (In fact, it’s a matter of great interest to me—I’m trying to write a book on the subject.) That does dispose of some of my comments. I misunderstood your position, and thought you were claiming that MRs actually hold the position, unstated, that it was wrong to stop the Nazis. Looking back, and at your new posts, that’s clearly not what you were saying. So let’s got to what you are saying:
my points are: (1) moral relativism, if held as true, leads to some necessary logical conclusions about moral statements; (2) people that call themselves moral relativists, for the most part, do not abide by or agree with those necessary logical conclusions, and instead hold moral beliefs that are logically irreconcilable with moral relativism.
Your first point is uncontroversial, I think, but the second one obviously depends on what those logical conclusions are. That’s what I’m not getting from your post or comments. Would you mind spelling those conclusions out?
You have no rational basis for making such a claim, as I have pointed out. Yes, you can say it; you can believe it; but moral relativism cannot logically justify such a statement or such a belief.
This is an odd response. Why would MR “logically justify” my belief that the Holocaust was wrong? MR is simply the label we put on my belief that I don’t have an objective standard for proving that the Holocaust was wrong. It doesn’t justify anything, any more than being a moral absolutist justifies the absolutist’s opinions.
If the final criteria for “good” and “valid” is what any individual happens to feel and believe (as you said, you evaluate other views through the lens of your own beliefs), then yes, that necessarily means that everyone’s moral beliefs are the equal of anyone else’s, because that is what they do as well.
I think this is the meat of the discussion. I believe that my own opinions are based on my own feelings and beliefs. That doesn’t logically require the conclusion that my beliefs are the equivalent of anyone else’s. I evaluate their beliefs myself, and decide for myself whether they measure up to my own standards. I think we all do this, actually.
Just as my preference for chocolate pie is the equal of your preference for strawberry. They are both nothing but personal preferences. There is no rational basis by which you can meaningfully make the claim that my preference for chocolate pie is “less than” your preference, and that I should be prevented from eating it, or that I shouldn’t prefer chocolate pie.
Pie trivializes the question, but I think I see your point. I personally don’t rationally calculate my moral beliefs; I hold certain assumptions (freedom is good, murder is bad) and base my moral beliefs on those. I think that’s true of everyone. The objectivist says, well, why is freedom good? For myself, I think I believe that because of how I was raised—culture, education, etc. And I think that’s true of everyone. Hence, some generations of Christians saw no problem with slavery while modern generations abhor it as evil. And of course, when the objectivist says that freedom is good because God says so, the relativist wonders, but what happens when people disagree over what God says? There’s also the Euthyphro problem, which is similar but slightly different. (In my experience, religious people have no problem disposing of the Euthyphro problem to their own satisfaction, but rarely to the satisfaction of anyone who doesn’t share their preconceptions.)Pro Hac Vice_{November 17, 2013
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PHV: Yes, the entire world behaves (to misquote Dawkins) exactly as if there is no objective morality. About the only statement I could wrench out of UD was that it communicates to us via our consciences, sort of like a radio receiver, except that we all seem to be fiddling with the knobs all the time.Graham2_{November 17, 2013
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Lots to respond to! I will start with Graham2. I agree that this is a frustratingly common dodge in online discussions. But let’s be honest—no one should come to Uncommon Descent (or most of the rest of the internet) expecting polite conversation. Barry Arrington's question is reasonable, regardless of the style of asking. And of course, people who don't answer his questions, or answer them in a way he doesn’t like, get banned. So to keep the conversation moving:
Pro Hac Vice, I will answer your question if you will tell me how you answer the grand sez who question posed by Johnson and quoted in comment 1.
I do. That’s all anyone can ever say in response to that question. Is adultery wrong? I think so. Says who? I do. I say it for many reasons, lots of which are rooted in my culture, upbringing, and education. Is adultery wrong? You think so. Says who? You do. You say it for many reasons, primarily (I presume) because you believe it to be an objective truth. But says who? Says you. When you cite to an objective standard, unless I can access that standard myself I only have your say-so. As WJM wrote, it always grounds out to a subjective statement. From your past comments, I think you escape this by claiming that everyone actually feels the same ultimate moral urges, but that some people perversely deny them. (I apologize if I misunderstood or misremember you.) But, again, says who? Says you. That’s what makes this discussion so frustrating for many relativists. We keep asking, so what’s the objective standard? How do you know? And the answers always rest on subjective belief. So, please tell me—what’s the objective standard? How do you know? And if can add a question, what do you do when someone cites an objective standard that's different than yours?Pro Hac Vice_{November 17, 2013
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When Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, Stalin had already killed more people than would eventually die in the German concentration camps. So why is Hitler condemned as the embodiment of evil while Stalin remains a man who "made some mistakes"? A man we had no hesitation forming an alliance with and providing vast amounts of free weapons. In Asia, the Japanese murdered perhaps 25 million Chinese civilians, and they are condemned only for not publishing better history text books. And after the Japanese left, the Chinese Communist Party killed 100 million more Chinese. And Mao was a "poet". These are guessed. No one kept accurate records. And what about the Anglo-American destruction of Dresden in the Spring of 1945? The war was already won, and there was no military objective. It was a "terror raid" to "break German CIVILIAN morale". George Kennan stood on the ruins of Dresden and concluded that the elimination of the Nazis wasn't worth the destruction of Dresden and the greater destruction across Europe. And from this he also concluded that the much greater destruction, which could have been greater efficiency and effectiveness, of a war to eliminate the Russian Communists was also not worth it. So for 50 years American foreign policy was based on Containment: we'll let you torture and kill as many people as you want in countries you control, but don't cross the line into our sphere of influence. So there is a valid Pacifist position that holds that the real evil was in England and the US refusing to accept all of the Jews, Gypsies, invalids, and mentally challenged people that Germany "wished to get rid of". Instead we held to the entirely bureaucratic position that the "immigration quota" for Germany was only 10,000 persons per year. So it is mass murder you object to, yes? And not merely murder by Nazis?mahuna_{November 17, 2013
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WJM: Just out of interest: can you give any evidence for the existence of objective morality ? Please note the word: evidence, ie: something you can point at and say: that is evidence for the existence of objective morality. Im not after your thoughts on what nice stuff it is, Im after evidence for its existence. I will leave it to your judgement as to what you consider evidence.Graham2_{November 17, 2013
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The self-proclaimed moral relativist knows, on some level, that morality is not just a set of subjective personal preferences. If they truly thought that and lived it as if true, then an adult abusing their child or a group ridiculing someone for their skin color or sexual orientation would no more affect them than watching someone order and eat a pie they disliked. So what? That's their personal preference. But it does affect them differently; they know it's not right, no matter what anyone involved thinks or believes, no matter if society agrees or disagrees; they know it's not right. They feel compelled to act as if it's an obligation; they feel authorized by something that transcends individual interpretation and subjective preference. Otherwise, they would never intervene; they wouldn't care enough to get involved. Hey, you order your pie, I'll order mine. Anyone that says differently is only deceiving themselves.William J Murray_{November 17, 2013
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I rarely see objectivists try to answer the question implicit in this discussion: what is your objective moral standard? What makes it objective? I think that any answer would be ultimately subjective.
All answers to all questions are "ultimately subjective" because all sensory experience and interpretation thereof into models of the world is done from the subjective perspective. Subjectivity cannot be avoided, even in empirical endeavors. Everything is experienced and thought about "subjectively". The debate here is not "what is the objective moral standard", but rather "morality is either an objective or a subjective commodity; if the former, what are the logical ramifications? If the latter, what are those logical ramifications? If people behaved rationally in accordance with their fundamental assumptions and principles, and they believed that morality was only a set of subjective preferences people have, why would they then feel obligated and authorized to intervene when others were doing something they considered immoral? Or would they react to behaviors they disagree with the same way they react to other "subjective preference" behaviors, like preferring vanilla to chocolate, or science fiction to crime dramas? Can anyone actually live and act as if morality was truly subjective in nature? If morality only refers to subjective preferences, why then would a moral relativist feel obligated to put themselves at risk to intervene in what they thought was an immoral activity that didn't involve anyone they knew, such as the abuse of a child that was a stranger to them? Would the moral relativist feel compelled or authorized to stop someone from watching a crime drama or from eating chocolate pie simply because the moral relativist subjectively disliked those things? Why wouldn't it be okay, then, to simply walk around trying to force everyone to act just like you? What, under moral relativism, makes moral right and wrong different from preferring chocolate pie to strawberry?William J Murray_{November 17, 2013
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Alan writes,
There is only subjective morality, William, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself you can reason to one. Sorry about that.
Who says there is only subjective morality? Just because you don’t have an objective standard by which to live does not mean that one doesn’t exist. Logical fallacy.
Why should the fact people make up and agree moral standards make it arbitrary. Consensus and experience are worth more than dogma.
Consensus? Popular opinion should make moral decisions? The consensus in Nazi Germany was that Jews were subhuman creatures and should be wiped out. Was that a good moral decision? The consensus in Rwanda in 1994 was that one tribe, the Hutu, felt that another tribe, the Tutsi, should be exterminated. Was that a good moral decision based on consensus? I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life. Consensus is meaningless, especially when it comes to morality, as the above examples prove. Millions of people can have the same opinion…and they could all be wrong. Then what?Barb_{November 17, 2013
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If moral relativists “rarely hold the beliefs that are the inescapable logical consequence of their premises,” then in what sense are they “inescapable logical consequences”?
Non-sequitur. People hold all sorts of irrational and poorly-thought-out beliefs. They even hold logically self-contradictory beliefs. People are in no way physically bound to believe that which logically implied by their fundamental premises.
Your point seems to be that you believe MRs should believe “that the Nazis were doing good and we shouldn’t have stopped them.”
No, my points are: (1) moral relativism, if held as true, leads to some necessary logical conclusions about moral statements; (2) people that call themselves moral relativists, for the most part, do not abide by or agree with those necessary logical conclusions, and instead hold moral beliefs that are logically irreconcilable with moral relativism. Just because you can believe that morality is relative, and also believe that the Nazis were immoral and also believe that you have the obligation and authority to intervene doesn't mean those beliefs are all logically consistent.
Empirically, though, they don’t. If your analysis fails to conform to the real world at all–and I note you couldn’t identify anyone who actually believes the things you use to libel MRs–then your analysis is probably wrong.
Except my argument doesn't depend on anyone believing that the Nazis were doing good. Whether or not any moral relativist actually believes that is entirely irrelevant to my argument.
In fact, your analysis is internally inconsistent. I would say that MRs can and do believe that their own morals are correct, even if they also believe that there is no purely objective standard for selecting right from wrong. That doesn’t prevent an MR from wanting to enforce their own morals when appropriate.
There is no physical law or property that prevents people from having all sorts of logically irreconcilable beliefs. Nothing prevents them from believing that morals are relative, and believing that the Nazis were immoral and that they have the authority to intervene. The fact that someone has these beliefs doesn't mean the beliefs are logically consistent with each other; it just means a person has those beliefs. People often have irrational and inconsistent beliefs and behave hypocritically in relation to their beliefs.
For example, as an MR I would say (unsurprisingly) that the Holocaust was wrong.
You have no rational basis for making such a claim, as I have pointed out. Yes, you can say it; you can believe it; but moral relativism cannot logically justify such a statement or such a belief.
But why would that stop me from taking action based on my belief that the Holocaust was wrong?
People act irrationally and hypocritically all the time, which is what moral relativists are -irrational and hypocritical, at least when it comes to behavior in the real world. If they truly held morality to be subjective (IOW, lived as if that was true), they would no more try to stop moral behavior they disagreed with than they would act to stop a person from eating vanilla ice cream if they so chose, because it would just be a matter of personal preference.
You are equating “my beliefs are not universal” with “your beliefs are just as good and valid as mine.” Those are not equivalent statements. I evaluate the moral beliefs of others through the lens of my own beliefs, as does every other human being I’ve ever met.
If the final criteria for "good" and "valid" is what any individual happens to feel and believe (as you said, you evaluate other views through the lens of your own beliefs), then yes, that necessarily means that everyone's moral beliefs are the equal of anyone else's, because that is what they do as well. Just as my preference for chocolate pie is the equal of your preference for strawberry. They are both nothing but personal preferences. There is no rational basis by which you can meaningfully make the claim that my preference for chocolate pie is "less than" your preference, and that I should be prevented from eating it, or that I shouldn't prefer chocolate pie.
There are many differences between your analysis of moral relativism and mine. One key difference is that mine matches up with the way actual people believe and behave, whereas yours does not.
Because people believe and behave a certain way doesn't mean their beliefs are logically consistent. People can and do have irrational, even self-contradictory beliefs. That's what I'm pointing out.William J Murray_{November 17, 2013
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May I interject here ... Barry, please dont do that: refuse to cooperate until the other party has jumped through your hoop. You seem to make a habit of this. Its very frustrating, and generally bad manners.Graham2_{November 17, 2013
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Pro Hac Vice, I will answer your question if you will tell me how you answer the grand sez who question posed by Johnson and quoted in comment 1.Barry Arrington_{November 17, 2013
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A late edit made my comment confusing--I should have said you're eliding some important words, not word.Pro Hac Vice_{November 17, 2013
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Moral relativists spout premises that lead to the inescapable conclusion that there is no such thing as good and evil.
I think you're eliding an important word here: moral relativists take as a premise that there is no such thing as an objective standard for good and evil. Those are different beliefs. MRs obviously do, as you admit, often believe in good and evil. They (we) merely doubt that there is any truly objective standard for discriminating between the two. (This depends somewhat on your definition of "good" and "evil," of course. I'm assuming that your definition doesn't assume objectivity. If it does, then your argument is circular.) I think Graham2's example gets at the meat of this conversation. If there is an objective statement of morality, what is it? The Bible? Even believers argue about how to interpret it, and it contains examples of conduct that is reprehensible to modern readers. I rarely see objectivists try to answer the question implicit in this discussion: what is your objective moral standard? What makes it objective? I think that any answer would be ultimately subjective.Pro Hac Vice_{November 17, 2013
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"Explain thyself." Comment 1 explains the "grand sez who." If you don't understand how after you've read it, let me know and I will try to explain further.Barry Arrington_{November 17, 2013
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Pro Hac Vice: “If moral relativists ‘rarely hold the beliefs that are the inescapable logical consequence of their premises,’ then in what sense are they ‘inescapable logical consequences’?: What an odd question. Moral relativists spout premises that lead to the inescapable conclusion that there is no such thing as good and evil. They then lead their lives as if there is in fact such a thing as good and evil. In the face of the inevitable cognitive dissonance, they try to cope by employing various dissonance reduction strategies. Take Graham2, for example, his favorite dissonance reduction strategy is to change the subject by placing God in the dock vis-à-vis some of the stories in the Old Testament. It seems to work for him, because it always seems to keep him from having to follow the thread of his premises through to their ultimate conclusion, which, of course, is nihilism.Barry Arrington_{November 17, 2013
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Barry:
Exactly. Now go back and read comment 1. Then come back and tell me why I should care what you say.
Well, in that case, you tell me why I should care what comment 1 says or anything else you might wish to say from now on, for that matter. Are we having a discussion or not? Explain thyself.Mapou_{November 17, 2013
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Mapou: “We need a solid definition of good and bad.” Barry: "Sez who?" Mapou: "Sez I." Exactly. Now go back and read comment 1. Then come back and tell me why I should care what you say.Barry Arrington_{November 17, 2013
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The fact that self-proclaimed moral relativists rarely hold the beliefs that are the inescapable logical consequence of their premises
If moral relativists "rarely hold the beliefs that are the inescapable logical consequence of their premises," then in what sense are they "inescapable logical consequences"? Your point seems to be that you believe MRs should believe "that the Nazis were doing good and we shouldn’t have stopped them." Empirically, though, they don't. If your analysis fails to conform to the real world at all--and I note you couldn't identify anyone who actually believes the things you use to libel MRs--then your analysis is probably wrong. In fact, your analysis is internally inconsistent. I would say that MRs can and do believe that their own morals are correct, even if they also believe that there is no purely objective standard for selecting right from wrong. That doesn't prevent an MR from wanting to enforce their own morals when appropriate. For example, as an MR I would say (unsurprisingly) that the Holocaust was wrong. Saying so wouldn’t have stopped the Nazis, because I can’t support that belief with any truly objective source and they would have disagreed with me. But why would that stop me from taking action based on my belief that the Holocaust was wrong? (That, by the way, is one thing we have in common. Despite your belief in “objective” morality, you couldn’t have cited a truly objective source that would have stopped the Holocaust. For objectivists and relativists alike, the only way to resolve the inevitable disagreements about morality is to resort to the same tools of persuasion: soap box, ballot box, ammo box, etc.) You are equating “my beliefs are not universal” with “your beliefs are just as good and valid as mine.” Those are not equivalent statements. I evaluate the moral beliefs of others through the lens of my own beliefs, as does every other human being I’ve ever met. There are many differences between your analysis of moral relativism and mine. One key difference is that mine matches up with the way actual people believe and behave, whereas yours does not. Shouting “Nazi!” over and over again does not make for a compelling argument, except to the choir.Pro Hac Vice_{November 17, 2013
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KF: I dont want to go on forever, so just one more try: WLC is a well known figure and generally respected in this blog (he is frequently quoted, and his views certainly mirror yours). His statement goes absolutely straight to the core of the OP, but is violently at odds with same. I think if a widely admired/quoted authority figure can so clearly contradict the thrust of the OP, it is reasonable to ask why.Graham2_{November 17, 2013
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G2: Now, you are caricaturing me -- about par for your course. What part of a linked chapter length discussion that onwards links serious discussions constitutes a dodge? Oh, I get it, I am not rising to your red herring led off to a strawman caricature soaked in ad hominems to be set alight to cloud, confuse, polarise and poison the original issue. Which was and is that subjectivism has not got a moral leg to stand on, especially when multiplied by evolutionary materialism or the like which have in them no foundational Is capable of carrying the weight of OUGHT. It seems that you must first and foremost resolve this, or stand exposed as unable to contest the charge of seeking to cynically manipulate moral sensibilities without having any basis on which to stand -- other than might and manipulation make "right." Which is exactly WJM's concern in the OP, and as is better spelled out by Hawthorne, in ways that tellingly reflect on Dawkins in light of his 1995 remarks on the record. when you show signs of coming to grips with the foundational issue and when you show me that you have stood with the tragic figure, Gen Petain along the Sacred Way, or Eisenhower making a decision to commit airborne troops in the face of sobering numbers on likely casualties and also to bomb France in the run-up to D-Day, or Churchill and Roosevelt making decisions on bombing Germany, then we can talk on a realistic basis. Other than that, you are just playing sick rhetorical games. KFkairosfocus_{November 17, 2013
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kairosfocus, quoting the dirt worshiper:
DNA neither cares nor knows.
So why does he care? And why does he know? He is made entirely of dirt and his DNA is just self-organized dirt, right? Heck, why did dirt care or know enough to self-organize in the first place? All dirt worshipers are stupid, IMO. I tell it like I see it.Mapou_{November 17, 2013
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KF: You spout all the usual jargon, but havent addressed Craigs actual words. Do you deny the quote ? (they are taken from his own web site) Its hardly a straw man, Craig really said that and (presumably) really means it.Graham2_{November 17, 2013
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F/N: Before the side track game is allowed to succeed, let me say I don't particularly like how WJM set up the discussion (having glanced at it). I much prefer Will Hawthorne's summary:
Assume (per impossibile) that atheistic naturalism [[= evolutionary materialism] is true. Assume, furthermore, that one can't infer an 'ought' from an 'is' [[the 'is' being in this context physicalist: matter-energy, space- time, chance and mechanical forces]. (Richard Dawkins and many other atheists should grant both of these assumptions.) Given our second assumption, there is no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer an 'ought'. And given our first assumption, there is nothing that exists over and above the natural world; the natural world is all that there is. It follows logically that, for any action you care to pick, there's no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer that one ought to refrain from performing that action. Add a further uncontroversial assumption: an action is permissible if and only if it's not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that action . . . [[We see] therefore, for any action you care to pick, it's permissible to perform that action. If you'd like, you can take this as the meat behind the slogan 'if atheism is true, all things are permitted'. For example if atheism is true, every action Hitler performed was permissible. Many atheists don't like this consequence of their worldview. But they cannot escape it and insist that they are being logical at the same time. Now, we all know that at least some actions are really not permissible (for example, racist actions). Since the conclusion of the argument denies this, there must be a problem somewhere in the argument. Could the argument be invalid? No. The argument has not violated a single rule of logic and all inferences were made explicit. Thus we are forced to deny the truth of one of the assumptions we started out with. That means we either deny atheistic naturalism or (the more intuitively appealing) principle that one can't infer 'ought' from [[a material] 'is'.
And in case the force of why this is needed is missed, Here is Dawkins in a 1995 Sci Am:
Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This lesson is one of the hardest for humans to learn. We cannot accept that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous: indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose. . . . . In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but pitiless indifference . . . . DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. [ “God’s Utility Function,” Sci. Am. Aug 1995, pp. 80 - 85.]
With a track record like this and worse to defend, no wonder he resorted to caricaturing and smearing WLC as an excuse not to debate him on substantial issues. KFkairosfocus_{November 17, 2013
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Pardon, it is G2 this time. PS: Those who genuinely struggle with issues of the deaths of innocents in war and the like and difficult texts such as are being used as the pivot to set up and knock over a strawman WLC -- so much easier to deal with strawmen -- may want to look here on, and here on the wider problem of evil. Given the entangled issues, there will be no easy answer.kairosfocus_{November 17, 2013
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Barry:
Mapou: “We need a solid definition of good and bad.” Sez who?
Sez I. That is, if we are to survive as a species. I just think that ultimate survival depends on unity and unity should be our moral code. As a Christian, I believe this is what Yahweh meant when he said, "I, the lord (elohim) am ONE" and I also believe this is what Jesus meant when he said, "Father, let them be ONE with us as we are ONE together." Note that even though Yahweh calls himself the elohim (a plural Hebrew word that means the lords), he still considers himself ONE. Unity is the key to morality and ultimate survival, IMO.Mapou_{November 17, 2013
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AF: It is obvious from the grotesque ad hominem laced strawman you have just made up to stand in for Dr Craig that you have no real answer to his substantial arguments on the many subjects he has spoken to. That speaks volumes. Further volumes are spoken by the substantial issue above, i.e. evolutionary materialism has no IS capable of bearing the weight of OUGHT, which grounds you require before you can legitimately characterise anything as good or evil, without being guilty of the worst sort of emotional manipulation substituted for a substantial case. KFkairosfocus_{November 17, 2013
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BA: My point was that similar words come from a (self proclaimed) authority on objective morality. Can you reconcile Craigs words with the point expressed in the OP ?Graham2_{November 17, 2013
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