People who doubt “evolution” are more likely to be racist?

_{Denyse O'Leary

April 8, 2022

Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Racism}

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So academic elite types claim in a recent study:

A disbelief in human evolution was associated with higher levels of prejudice, racist attitudes and support of discriminatory behavior against Blacks, immigrants and the LGBTQ community in the U.S., according to University of Massachusetts Amherst research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Similarly, across the globe — in 19 Eastern European countries, 25 Muslim countries and in Israel — low belief in evolution was linked to higher biases within a person’s group, prejudicial attitudes toward people in different groups and less support for conflict resolution…
“People who perceive themselves as more similar to animals are also people who tend to have more pro-social or positive attitudes toward outgroup members or people from stigmatized and marginalized backgrounds,” Syropoulos explains. “In this investigation, we were interested in examining whether belief in evolution would also act in a similar way, because it would reinforce this belief that we are more similar to animals.”
University of Massachusetts Amherst, “Disbelief in human evolution linked to greater prejudice and racism” at ScienceDaily (April 4, 2022)

The paper requires a fee or subscription.

A friend who has read the paper kindly writes to say,

I think this study is a prime example of the temptation to make the correlation equals causation fallacy. What this paper is measuring has nothing to do with evolution or belief in it. It is measuring parochial attitudes among people in insulated groups who don’t have much contact with the outside world. These people tend to be prejudiced against other races and also have little contact with evolution so they are skeptical. It just shows that isolation breeds prejudice against the other.
The principle that isolation breeds prejudice against the “other” is a truism. And you could find evidence supporting this truism from very different groups. If you surveyed attitudes of ivory tower types you’d find similar prejudice against conservative religious groups, you’d find similar discriminatory attitudes. Why? Because those evolutionary secular academic types who accept human evolution have very little contact with conservative religious people.
So what’s interesting isn’t the finding of this paper. What’s interesting is why they chose to study isolated people who happen to be religious and defined prejudice as attitudes towards certain privileged groups in society (eg LGBTQ). Why not study prejudice of secular types who accept human evolution towards religious consevatives? You’d find analogous prejudices. But the researchers weren’t interested in studying that…because they are evolutionary secularists with an agenda to make religious conservatives look bad.

Come to think of it, if you are here anyway, you may also wish to read: E. O. Wilson and racism: The smoking gun is found. Some have dismissed the findings but others say they fit a pattern. From Schulson’s story: “I don’t really care that Wilson had racist ideas, because I know pretty much all of the people that I dealt with, when I was coming up through the science system, had racist ideas,” said [evolutionary biologist Joseph] Graves, who in 1988 became the first Black American to receive a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology. “Wilson was just one of many.” Oh.

And remember, Wilson was supposed to be the second Darwin. Funny no one talks about that now.

Comments

Perhaps, you are unaware of how debt slavery has been a major social issue
What has debt slavery to do with negative numbers? Why was the discussion turned into an example of something completely different? And also why with an accusation? No one is denying debt can be a major problem. Has logic hit home?jerry_{April 10, 2022
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PS, just curious, are price level, rate of interest [a debt tied metric], inflation, growth rate etc real entities?kairosfocus_{April 10, 2022
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Jerry, I am highlighting a very real and powerful state of affairs that manifests a class of quantity and structure in action. Perhaps, you are unaware of how debt slavery has been a major social issue. Haiti, having won independence by revolution, was confronted with a French Fleet with implied connivance of the UK and forced to accept and attempt to pay off a bill for value of capital, land and people as priced on a slave market. This is the root of Haiti's many disasters including having to cut down magnificent mahogany forests with 7 foot diameter trees to sell. Ayti owe, Ayti have to pay. I figure France has US$ 21 billion owed to Haiti over that 1826 disgraceful crushing act of naval intimidation and economic war. After this, tell me it's only imagination and we may have a racism point to discuss. A REAL black lives matter case. KF PS, I am pointing to naturally present framework entities for any possible world, which exert effects through constraints on logic of being. The same logic at core of our reasoning and argument says they are there, here, everywhere.kairosfocus_{April 10, 2022
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Debt settled, and the state of affairs in which a negative integer is manifested is demonstrated
You are confusing something real with something imaginary. I take something (represented by a positive integer) and give it to someone else. There was a stipulation that the person give me something back in exchange. (represented by a positive integer) This is often called subtraction. But subtraction is just removing something represented by positive integer from another entity that is an entity represented by a bigger positive integer. It all comes down to positive integers because something real is the only thing that exists. Multiplication is just fast addition of positive integers. Division is just fast subtraction of positive integers. Again, you are confusing something useful with reality.jerry_{April 10, 2022
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PPS, hey Vivid, any Native Americans in your family tree to round out the interracial representation? We have asiatic, african, dot com indian and euro already on the table. My vote is, top end indian girls are the very prettiest (but could be biased due to my mom), what say you.kairosfocus_{April 10, 2022
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Jerry, have you ever owed money? That state of affairs shows the reality: ($10,000) + $10,000 --> $0 Debt settled, and the state of affairs in which a negative integer is manifested is demonstrated. This is a major context where, historically Z- and by extension R- etc came up. We also see 0 attaching naturally. Q has to do with parts and wholes, R has to do with say how a string of 1.5 m length is continuous and can in principle be cut anywhere. C has to do with rotation, R* has to do with infinitesimals at the core of issues such as rates and accumulations of change, with the function 1/x giving a catapult to transfinite hyperreals. Start from how any distinct possible world W has in it inherently {A|~A} thus 0,1,2 thence von Neumann, thence the panoply of quantitative abstracta that do not actively cause but express logic of being quantitative and structural constraints so are recognised as real. Such abstracta express identifiable states of affairs and are embedded entities and so sets in any possible world. In our imagination can be taken as admitting they are abstract rather than concrete and are recognised from the constraints of the logic of structure and quantity aka Mathematics. And more, you do the word count, I provided further cases on the possibility of a chain of further objections, Z- --> Q,R,R*,C etc. KF PS, the OP said enough, we can take it as endorsed on one side and as recognised on the other as an objection too far as SA, Vivid and this commenter would demonstrate by our mere presence.kairosfocus_{April 10, 2022
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I get it and I apologize
Absurdity squared! One person who never gets anything correct identifying with someone else who never gets anything correct. Appropriate I guess. Or is it irony squared? Aside: still little or no racism discussed.jerry_{April 10, 2022
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CD, repeating a fallacy does not turn it into a sound argument, it is the further fallacy of doubling down. First, in your objection just above, you -- again, predictably -- implicitly appeal to our duties to truth, right reason, warrant, fairness, justice and neighbour. You therefore illustrate yet again what you plainly refuse to acknowledge: we are dealing with branch on which we all sit first principles here, which are therefore self evident as the attempt to object appeals to the very duties it would overturn. So, your objection is again self referentially absurd. It may scratch your anti-Christian itch to single out apologists [those who reply to objections to and/or attempted dismissals/marginalisation of the well warranted truth of the gospel], but kindly notice that the main author I have cited is Cicero, a pagan Roman statesman, rhetor and stoic philosopher dating to 100 years before Paul visited Rome. The point is, self evident by being branch on which we sit first truths, so knowable and objectively true. Ontological issues and root of world issues arise from asking, how do we get to a world with responsible, rational, self-moved, significantly free, morally governed creatures. That is onward as was discussed above at 21, which you would be well advised to consider. Your problem is with philosophy, not "merely" the Christian faith. KFkairosfocus_{April 10, 2022
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framework to any possible world as abstracta
Yes, imagination can produce almost anything.
the power of Math
And a lot of it is useful. No one is denying that. Again, there is no example of a negative integer despite all the letters one can write.jerry_{April 10, 2022
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Jerry, it can be shown that N,Z,Q,R,R*,C etc are framework to any possible world as abstracta that are part of the built in logic of structure and quantity. Hence, Wigner's observation on the power of Math. KF PS, since you want to play at word count, you do the count.kairosfocus_{April 10, 2022
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Seversky @ 65 I get it and I apologize if it appeared I was lecturing you. My real problem is not with your observations but with the misappropriation and misuse of the term "objective morality" by Christian apologists who think they have latched on to something clever with the "without God there is no source for objective morality" trope. Thus, by denying "objective morality" one has no basis to condemn (or even comment on) the Holocaust or child molestation or any other myriad horrors that humans are capable of meting out.chuckdarwin_{April 10, 2022
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Dare I bring up that there is no such thing as a negative integer except in our imagination? No that would stop the ridiculous comments and thousands of words posted over nonsense. Can’t have that. That’s the purpose of UD for many here. Aside: you can make a case for positive integers as I have just done by referring to thousands of words. I can point to each one. (73 words including these)jerry_{April 10, 2022
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Swv, the key point of the general warrant pivoting on branch on which we all sit first principles is that there are universal knowable moral truths and first principles of right reason they bind on us all not just codes relative to cultures etc, with Cicero's first duties of reason as intelligible core law as exhibit a. KFkairosfocus_{April 9, 2022
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Chuckdarwin/17
I would actually describe your notion of morality as “objective morality.” Objective morality vis a vis absolute morality is simply a set of rules agreed to by (democracy) or imposed on (monarchy) a given culture/society which are the “rules of the road” that allows a culture to function. These rules are objective because they are publicly communicated, readily understood by members of the culture, carry consequences and are clear as to what is and is not appropriate behavior. But, unlike absolute laws, they can be changed and modified. A person may not agree with them but is still subject to them unless that person chooses to opt out and either leave the culture, suffer the consequence for non-compliance or overthrow or change the culture.
My position is that "objective" refers to anything that exists regardless of whether or not conscious observers such as ourselves perceive it or are aware of it. By this understanding, I assume that all other people are objective "entities", that they exist and will continue to exist regardless of whether or not I am aware of them. My personal moral code, however it was derived, is subjective. It originates with me. If I were removed from existence my personal moral code would disappear along with me. The same would be true if all other human life on Earth were to be eliminated, either by some cosmic disaster or by an incompetent Designer who decided we were a mistake after all and wiped the slate clean. All those personal moral codes, whose purpose is to regulate the way humans behave towards one another, would disappear as well. The question is whether all those other moral codes, originating with all those other - objective from my perspective - human beings, are thereby objective. I would argue that anything that exists nowhere else but in the consciousness of intelligent beings such as ourselves is still subjective whether we are talking about one consciousness or billions. But this is really a question of definition and yours works just as well as mine.Seversky_{April 9, 2022
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VL, we repeat prior discussions. Every particular negative integer we can state say - 768563 or represent - k, has onward successors in the L-ward direction without limit; notice my use of implicit iteration and mathematical induction [which with hyperreals can obviously be made transfinite]. Thus, the set is transfinite, and that is agreed; it was never in dispute and to repeatedly put up talking points that invite the inference that it was or is, is to commit a subtle, pernicious where there is smoke there must be a fire strawman fallacy. My use of hyperreals since 2016 with later formal reference to model theory is simply to allow us to frame Z in the wider R* so we can see how the issue of transfinite span lurks in the ellipses we use. For h smaller than any 1/n, for any actually countable to n in N, we identify H = 1/h, so we see transfinite hyperreals, which bracket N, with -H bracketing Z-, etc. Z*: . . . -H, -[H-1] . . . -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, . . . [H-1], H, . . . where, continuum R*: . . . ___-H___ -[H-1]___ . . . ___-2___-1___ 0___1___2___ . . . ___[H-1]___ H ___ . . . where we may symbolise the continuum near 0, -1---*0* ---1, where the asterisks mark where infinitesimal hyperreals such as h lurk. From this, we cannot traverse in finite stage steps [such as +1, +100 or +10^100 etc] any span k . . . m, where the ellipsis is transfinite, explicitly or implicitly. The material point is, as the real physical world we inhabit is causal-temporal, thermodynamic, each year k followed by k+1 etc is part of a succession of finite stages. Where, no such stepwise succession, for very similar reasons, can actually complete a transfinite span. We can have Z, but when we match years to date with members of Z, necessarily due to the infeasible supertask of actual transfinite succession, the number of ACTUAL past years will be strictly finite i.e. with a beginning. Quantum foam models etc do not evade the issue of a finite past with a beginning for our physical world. Much follows from that, on logic of being. KFkairosfocus_{April 9, 2022
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VL, physical inspection is only one means of warrant as we know from mathematical reasoning etc. Moral truths can be warranted through the use of right reason, just as many other truths not subjected to the same degree of hyperskepticism. As has been repeatedly pointed out seven core first duties are such that the one who attempts to object will invariably appeal to them implicitly. For example just above you appealed to duties to warrant, right reason and truth in your challenging question. That sort of branch on which we all sit pervasiveness is characteristic of self evident first truths. A classic example relates to right reason, as Epictetus showed over 1800 years ago:
DISCOURSES CHAPTER XXV How is logic necessary? When someone in [Epictetus'] audience said, Convince me that logic is necessary, he answered: Do you wish me to demonstrate this to you?—Yes.—Well, then, must I use a demonstrative argument?—And when the questioner had agreed to that, Epictetus asked him. How, then, will you know if I impose upon you?—As the man had no answer to give, Epictetus said: Do you see how you yourself admit that all this instruction is necessary, if, without it, you cannot so much as know whether it is necessary or not? [Notice, inescapable, thus self evidently true and antecedent to the inferential reasoning that provides deductive proofs and frameworks, including axiomatic systems and propositional calculus etc. We here see the first principles of right reason in action. Cf J. C. Wright]
Such truths are self evident and objectively true, first principles. KFkairosfocus_{April 9, 2022
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More on the math: KF, will you agree that for any negative integer you can traverse the integers one at a time from that integer to zero in a finite number of steps - true? That is, every negative integer is a finite distance from zero.Viola Lee_{April 9, 2022
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re 59. Good. We have no disagreement about the math. re 60: the fat that there is tree in my yard is a objective truth–a universally accessible warranted truth-because we can inspect. Can we inspect a moral truth? How? For instance, there are many people who believe (I'll try to pick something serious but not too fiery) that capital punishment is wrong. Can this be inspected to find out whether it is true or not?Viola Lee_{April 9, 2022
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VL, if that is indeed the case, it is universally accessible warranted truth, on grounds we can inspect it, just like the Mango, breadnut, breadfruit, banana, cashew, avocado and Christmas palm trees in the yard here. KFkairosfocus_{April 9, 2022
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VL, there never was a claim on the table that there is an identifiable lowest integer. Indeed, this is part of how we know that the negative integers are a transfinite set, so your confined interest is on a point not in dispute and is a step to failing to accurately characterise the onward substantial argument. Which is that if there is a claimed beginningless past then say taking the singularity as zero point and taking up the fluctuations model etc, then onward there would be previous "years" in year by year succession that for every - k you name onward actual prior years without limit would have been -[k+1], -[k+2] . . . equally without limit. This implies a transfinite succession traversed in finite stage steps, an infeasible supertask, an impossibility on logic of structure and quantity as applied to a temporal causal thermodynamic world. So, we know such is not possible, whether that is interesting to you or not. And, it entails there was a finitely remote beginning of the physical world, even on any model that tries to extend beyond the big bang. As was further outlined above, again whether you are interested or not, that means we are objectively warranted to infer to a necessary being world root capable of causing the world we inhabit. Which is a case of objective knowledge regarding the root of reality. There are other onward objective, knowable truths such as that we are morally governed by branch on which we all sit first duties of reason that show that character by being implicitly appealed to by objectors, for instance. That then ties to the just pointed out by indicating that, on pain of reducing mindedness to grand delusion were the pattern of moral government false and so delusional, that the root will also be inherently good and utterly wise, to bridge the is ought gap post Euthyphro and Hume et al. So, we see frameworks of objective, warranted, knowable truths on topics you have denied that possibility for. Not, that there are not disagreements, but that there actually are relevant knowable objective though unfashionable truths. KFkairosfocus_{April 9, 2022
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KF writes, "SA, objective becomes universal because it has generally accessible warrant." So the fact that there is a maple tree in my front yard is "objective in the universal sense." - true? It certainly has "generally accessible warrant."Viola Lee_{April 9, 2022
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Jerry, the scarlet brand, racism, was deployed to taint and dismiss by stigmatising, stereotyping and scapegoating. That was adequately answered in the OP:
I think this study is a prime example of the temptation to make the correlation equals causation fallacy. What this paper is measuring has nothing to do with evolution or belief in it. It is measuring parochial attitudes among people in insulated groups who don’t have much contact with the outside world. These people tend to be prejudiced against other races and also have little contact with evolution so they are skeptical. It just shows that isolation breeds prejudice against the other. The principle that isolation breeds prejudice against the “other” is a truism. And you could find evidence supporting this truism from very different groups. If you surveyed attitudes of ivory tower types you’d find similar prejudice against conservative religious groups, you’d find similar discriminatory attitudes. Why? Because those evolutionary secular academic types who accept human evolution have very little contact with conservative religious people. So what’s interesting isn’t the finding of this paper. What’s interesting is why they chose to study isolated people who happen to be religious and defined prejudice as attitudes towards certain privileged groups in society (eg LGBTQ). Why not study prejudice of secular types who accept human evolution towards religious consevatives? You’d find analogous prejudices. But the researchers weren’t interested in studying that…because they are evolutionary secularists with an agenda to make religious conservatives look bad.
KFkairosfocus_{April 9, 2022
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SA, objective becomes universal because it has generally accessible warrant. So, it is adequately evident to the eye of reason and should be assented to by all. KFkairosfocus_{April 9, 2022
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KF writes, "VL, but of course there is no identifiable algebraically lowest integer, the negatives are the mirror images of the natural counting numbers so `n + n = 0." Good, we agree on that. Would you agree that "you can’t say that the negative integers “begin” anyplace?" If you look back at 43 and 48, (which I assume you read, but I will refresh your memory), the rest of what you wrote is not relevant to my interest in this topic.Viola Lee_{April 9, 2022
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JH, whatever validity applies was adequately resolved in the OP, and I say that as one of blended African, European and Indian ancestry. I must further note that people are being routinely stigmatised on racism etc as part of the cultural marxist oppressive White thesis, intended to taint, denigrate and dismiss without accountability over warrant on the merits. A classic is the historically tendentious attempt in the teeth of massive evidence to suggest 1619 is the true foundation of the USA not 1776. Ironically, the US DoI of 1776 is a courageously anti racist natural law argument by men willing to imply indictment of themselves to put down a marker calling for transformational change. As for the past sell by date of tagging those who challenge evolutionary materialistic scientism with the scarlet letter brand, bigotry, that is an evasion of both the failure to account for origin of life and body plans by blind chance and/or mechanical necessity, and that to account for emergence of rationally, responsibly, conscience guided freedom required to carry out theorising. Evolutionary materialistic scientism fails decisively, its fellow travellers go down with it. It is an implied confession of failure to now try to prop it up by tainting those who dare to doubt it, as though it carried the day on the merits. It has failed on the merits, that is enough. KF PS, Haldane on the core failure, rearranged as a set of propositions:
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For
if [p:] my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain [–> taking in DNA, epigenetics and matters of computer organisation, programming and dynamic-stochastic processes; notice, "my brain," i.e. self referential] ______________________________ [ THEN] [q:] I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. [--> indeed, blindly mechanical computation is not in itself a rational process, the only rationality is the canned rationality of the programmer, where survival-filtered lucky noise is not a credible programmer, note the funcionally specific, highly complex organised information rich code and algorithms in D/RNA, i.e. language and goal directed stepwise process . . . an observationally validated adequate source for such is _____ ?] [Corollary 1:] They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence [Corollary 2:] I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. [--> grand, self-referential delusion, utterly absurd self-falsifying incoherence]
In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. Cf. here on (and esp here) on the self-refutation by self-falsifying self referential incoherence and on linked amorality.]
That's nearly 100 years ago, and unanswered to date. It's over. And, it is manifest that there are reliable signs of intelligently directed configuration in the world of life from the cell to us.kairosfocus_{April 9, 2022
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VL, but of course there is no identifiable algebraically lowest integer, the negatives are the mirror images of the natural counting numbers so `n + n = 0. That is how Z- is transfinite, by implication of that pattern. The problem is, when one claims a past with no beginning for our temporal-causal, thermodynamically successive world, one implies that for every -k, there was a previous year -[k+1] then -[k+2] etc without limit, i.e. one implies the actual, physical past traversed the transfinite in steps, so there are past actual years that cumulatively amount to implicit transfinite traverse. That is impossible of being as an infeasible supertask, the only successive span of years that can be traversed is finite. Among other things this means there was a finitely remote beginning, even if one proposes an earlier quantum foam stage. Or any other thermodynamically constrained causal temporal succession. More to the point, there is a substantial logical case on the table, which has been outlined from time to time when connected matters have come up. There has been no empty repetition. KFkairosfocus_{April 9, 2022
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SA, I can point to experiences that anyone can have to confirm objective facts in your first sense. It is an objective fact that there is a maple tree in my front yard. The experiences that confirm that fact are accessible to anyone. However, the knowledge that the maple tree is my front yard is a piece of knowledge that resides in the minds of all the people who have had those experiences. Being an objective fact doesn’t mean that something (the fact) resides somehow apart from the people who hold. You write, “But “objective” can also mean “universal” as it points to the source of the code and not the output. So, it’s not a question of just having a published norm that a group agrees upon. Instead, “objective morals” refers to a source not “created subjectively” by a person or group of persons.” How do we know such objective morals exist? Maybe objective means what you offer in the second sense, but how do we know such things exist? Of course if you believe in God, you believe such a source exists (it always seems to come back to this, doesn’t), but if such a source doesn’t exist, then objective in the second sense has no meaning. Up above, Jerry wrote, “it was pointed out that nearly every ethnic group from around the globe especially those of Asia had similar observations on the nature of humans and similar recommended ways of living because of it”, and I replied, “Yep, people are all alike in some important ways despite cultural differences and different cultural manifestations of those similarities.” That is, there is a common human nature, I believe, and some common moral foundations in our nature, so we see some commonalities and agreement among all people despite the differences, large and small, that exist. But those commonalities are just recognizable features of our common experiences of people: they are objective in the same sense that the maple tree is. Just because we have a common understanding about human behavior doesn’t mean that that understanding all of a sudden has existence outside of its presence in human beings. So the difference in our perspective in that I don’t accept your assertion that morals that refer to a source not “created subjectively” by a person or group of persons exists. All morals are created by people, but due to our common moral nature, we agree about a lot of them. But they have no special ontological status that the objective fact of the tree in my yard doesn’t have. That' my view, and some of the rationale for my view.Viola Lee_{April 9, 2022
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CD
First a number of apologists use the mantra “without God there’s no objective morality.” By using this semantic bait and switch they claim that human instituted moral systems are all “subjective” so non-believers have no moral grounding to distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong, etc. I view this as one of religion’s biggest sophistries.
See my post 49 giving the different meanings of "objective" in this regard. With atheist morality, it's entirely subjective in its origin. It can have no universal value and it can only be binding on people through sheer force. It is created by human beings for subjective reasons. Atheists have no standard by which to say the Nazi code of morals is better or worse than any other. Of course, atheists can make up a code of rules. But "objective morals" is referring to universal norms that are built into human nature. Those norms are binding on everyone by "conscience" which every human possesses. We don't need a government to tell us that genocide is evil, even though the Nazi's thought it was ok. The objective moral norms built into humans tell us that. Atheism, however, would have to accept the Nazis and KKK and Jihadists alongside everyone else, since they're all just subjective morals and that's all atheism has. Yes, publishing them somewhere makes them publicly accessible and "fixed" which is better than something that a person makes up day-by-day with no consistency. But they're not that much different. The Freemasonic code of ethics was created by Freemasons to support their group. It's subjective for those interests and it can be and has been changed as interests changed. Not so with the Ten Commandments, for example.
Second, all moral systems derive from power, whether human or divine. Two of our greatest founders, Jefferson and Madison, knew that the solution to the issue of power was to dilute it (checks and balances) and make it accountable to people (representative government).
That's fine for civil law, but those founders weren't creating a new moral law. A person who objected to their ideas couldn't be considered "immoral" for doing so. But yes also, certainly morality has to be given by power. That's the essential point. Human beings have extremely limited real power (authority) to impose moral norms on anyone else. But without objective norms, that's what they do. Clearly, the power of God - who is the actual creator of the moral law and the final judge of people's behavior, is infinitely greater and considering that God actually created all life (and is therefore the rightful Father and custodian of it), His authority is immensely greater than what any human or even group of humans can have. Atheists do not know the meaning or destiny of life, so they have no basis upon which to tell people what to do and what is right or wrong. That's what evolution ended up with anyway. There can be no moral sins or crimes in the evolutionary worldview. Genocide is just an action of a species to advance the cause of survival and reproductive success in whatever way the fitness variables dictate. There can't be anything "wrong" with any human behavior. Very few evolutionists admit this. Alex Rosenberg admits it but says also that he doesn't like it. Nietzsche admitted it and was very upset that other atheists didn't have the courage to do the same. But trying to live by an amoral philosophy is a recipe for insanity, as I think his life showed. But atheism is nihilistic - it's amoral. About the best it can do is say that people should behave according to majority rule (thus, the morality of the Third Reich would have to be supported).Silver Asiatic_{April 9, 2022
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Jerry: On an OP about racism. So far two comments mentioned racism. Two out of 42. That’s on target.
I am proud that I am one of the two. :)JHolo_{April 9, 2022
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VL
So which is it? What does “objective” mean? Switching back and forth without any clarity on these two meanings (and they would both need further specificity) makes discussion very difficult.
Philosophical terms carry a variety of meanings. Terms like form, substance, essence - even the term "evolution" can mean different things. "Objective" with regards to morality can mean "publicly accessiblle". So, a written code of moral norms is "objective" in that sense. It can be referenced, discussed and analyzed. There can be a Nazi code of morality, a Marxist or a secularist - or any set of laws that is not only codified, but which is agreed upon by a culture or society. Those are "objective norms" in their presentation and output. But "objective" can also mean "universal" as it points to the source of the code and not the output. So, it's not a question of just having a published norm that a group agrees upon. Instead, "objective morals" refers to a source not "created subjectively" by a person or group of persons. Objective morality in that sense is aligned with "natural rights" - the rights inherent in rational human nature. As a parallel: The rules for the game of Monopoly for example are "objective". Anybody can access them. They are publicly known. They're not rules which are hidden in the subjective experience of a person. The same with the rules of logic, for example. They're objective, they can be studied and taught. However, there's a big difference. The rules for Monopoly at their origin are "subjective". They were created out of the ideas of a person or person. They could have been different. Even now, they could change based on the subjective-whims of the owners of the game. So, just because the rules are public, doesn't mean they're not subjective in their origin. They were someone's subjective opinion, put into the game and made-public (objective). The rules of logic, however, at their source are not subjective. They don't represent someone's opinion. They're universal norms aligned with human nature. They are objective in that sense - universal and known. That's how the term "objective" has different meanings and can be used correctly but differently depending on the context.Silver Asiatic_{April 9, 2022
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