Was Killing Babies Good?

_{Barry Arrington

February 4, 2019

Intelligent Design}

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I have a question for our materialist interlocutors. As Georgi Boorman summarizes in this article, in many ancient cultures killing certain babies was an acceptable, even lauded, practice. Here’s my question: You say that morality is a social construct; which means that “good” means what the people of a society collectively deem to be good. If that is so, was it an affirmatively good thing when an ancient pagan killed a baby girl because she was a baby girl instead of a baby boy?

Comments

Exchange headlined: https://uncommondescent.com/atheism/the-problem-of-anti-conscience-anti-theistic-prejudice-driving-opinion-views-and-policy/kairosfocus_{February 8, 2019
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BB, Do you see what you imply:
The fact that we no longer blindly accept discrimination based on the justification of freedom of conscience or freedom of religion is a good thing
This is first a dismissal of already offered grounding of moral truth and knowledge, as well as obvious refusal to seriously ponder already linked discussions that lay out legal, genetic, socio-cultural, ethical etc evidence and argument. In effect just on your sneering dismissal, we are invited to hold that once someone's conscience and duty to God and to truth, evidence, right reason, prudence, fairness etc are at odds with your politically correct notions, agenda or imposition, such must be swept away as blind without further consideration. Moreover, this implies targetted religious discrimination on the presumption that religiously motivated or linked views can never be reasonable or responsible, being presumed to be empty, blind adherence to myths and superstitious prejudices. Given abundant and readily accessible evidence to the contrary (e.g. cf. a 101 here on in context), such is of course, plainly turnspeech, toxically loaded projection on your part. Sorry, it does not work that way. And, again, we see directly from you further evidence of just how far wrong our civilisation is going today. So, that you are by your own admission blind and deaf to the shipwreck shoals ahead, we have good reason not to take your objections, dismissals and sneering at the despised, stereotyped, scapegoated religious other seriously. Save, as evidence of deep-rooted, conscience-numbing hostility. KFkairosfocus_{February 8, 2019
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BB, the only comforting news on a holocaust in progress would be restoration of justice, which involves STOPPING the shedding of innocent blood and ACCOUNTING for how such could ever have been advanced under false colour of law. A global truth, reconciliation and reformation commission would be an excellent way to address the latter. KF PS: There is a reason why you may not notice the accelerating moral disintegration of our civilisation. Sadly, it has to do with the corrosive, benumbing effects already highlighted. My native land has a proverb: fire deh pon mus mus tail but him think seh ah cool breeze deh deh.kairosfocus_{February 7, 2019
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"Why would I waste my time doing an experiment if it’s not going to answer the question I’m asking?" You comment like a man with plenty of time to waste. The experiment doesn't cost anything except a little time and would assuredly consist of less waste than any single comment here. It's OK, I knew you weren't ever going to do it, and I know why, too.ScuzzaMan_{February 6, 2019
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KF
For example, would you have been comfortable to hear that the rate of the holocaust of Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians etc was lower than previously?
I would definitely be comforted by that information if it was true. Wouldn't you? The issue is not rates... When attaining zero abortions is a completely unattainable goal then rates are critical. If you saw a train load of Jews heading to a concentration camp and you had the opportunity to save only two of them, would you not do anything because rates aren't the issue? What you call rates translates into individual lives. Individual lives are always important.
Such blood guilt warps thinking, and your response in the face of telling numbers is an index of our civilisation’s moral collapse.
I don't feel any blood guilt. And I don't see any moral collapse of society. If anything, I see a civilization improving its moral behavior. The stigma of teen sex and teen pregnancy has been reduced. Abortion rates are on the decline. The stigma around same sex attraction has been reduced. Racial tensions, although there is still much work to be done, are reducing. Discrimination cloaked under the justification of religious freedom is being confronted. Children are now being taught fact based knowledge about sex, not the puritanical judgement based approach that emphasized scare tactics. Women are approaching an equal footing with men with respect to full participation in our society. Violence is on the decline. Global travel and the ease of global communication is removing the innate fear we have of others. This is not the collapse of a civilization, it is the rising up of a civilization.
Where, if you are so insensitive to the rising tide of bias, discrimination and worse that targets freedom of conscience, that also speaks sad volumes;...
The fact that we no longer blindly accept discrimination based on the justification of freedom of conscience or freedom of religion is a good thing. Freedom of conscience and freedom of religion were historically used as justification for many acts of discrimination, including the subjugation of women and the ban on interracial marriage. How can we be certain that some of the discriminations now justified using freedom of conscience and freedom of religion are not equally unjustifiable?
complacency will not help.
I agree. That is why I actively fight against some of these discriminations.Brother Brian_{February 6, 2019
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BO'H: pardon but wrong framing. Did you notice, that just to argue, you pivot on an assumed, known duty to truth, right reason, prudence, fairness etc? Have you pondered what would happen were that duty dismissed by the population at large so that people now habitually lied and would blandly insist that 2 + 2 = 6 if it were to their perceived advantage, etc? Have you pondered the implications of such a perceived, pervasive duty that governs our thought-life being delusional, an empty perception with nothing behind it? Grand delusion and self-referential collapse of our vaunted rationality. In short, we have every good reason to take seriously that we are under moral government starting with our thought life. The real framing issue then is, what sort of world can ground the rational, responsible, morally governed freedom of creatures such as we are? The answer is, that -- on pain of ungrounded ought -- the IS-OUGHT gap can only be bridged at the root of reality. We need a source of the world adequate to cause such a world as we find ourselves in, complete with fine tuned cosmos, cell based life that uses coded, complex algorithms, and morally governed creatures. That requires a necessary and powerful being independent of external enabling causal factors that is also inherently good. KFkairosfocus_{February 6, 2019
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BB, your response unfortunately is revealing. For example, would you have been comfortable to hear that the rate of the holocaust of Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians etc was lower than previously? The issue is not rates (and about a million more victims per week globally cannot reasonably be deemed an acceptable rate), it is that we have distorted our civilisation and law, benumbed our consciences and are enabling the mass killing of our living posterity in the womb under false colour of law. Such blood guilt warps thinking, and your response in the face of telling numbers is an index of our civilisation's moral collapse. As for resort to loaded assertions such as X-phobia, i.e. characterising principled objection as irrational, religiously motivated fear, that also reflects the moral collapse of our times. (If you don't know that there are serious principled objections to the gender-bender perversities of our time with now what 112 claimed "genders" on the table and many other signs that something is drastically wrong, then that is already decisive.) Where, if you are so insensitive to the rising tide of bias, discrimination and worse that targets freedom of conscience, that also speaks sad volumes; perhaps the in-progress mother of all lawsuits on that subject will help wake some of us up. Our civilisation is in deep trouble, complacency will not help. KFkairosfocus_{February 6, 2019
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ScuzzaMan - I'm sorry, but I'm a statistician, and I just did a power analysis. Such an experiment (with an n of 1) would be extremely underpowered. I'm also not sure what it would tell be about objective morals, which is what I'm asking about. This is especially troubling as you acknowledge that I could get a variety of results, depending on who is listening, so how can I objectively know that the answers are objectively the right ones? You can deride me as a scientist, but I'm still not going to do an experiment which is so poorly designed as to be useless. It's mimicking a situation which has occurred many times, with a wide variety of results, and there is no indication that the results I would get would be more reliable. The answers to my concerns about this reliability have been to acknowledge it, without giving a solution. Why would I waste my time doing an experiment if it's not going to answer the question I'm asking?Bob O'H_{February 6, 2019
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KF@64, I am very comfortable with the direction civilization is heading. Abortions are on the decline, the more mysogenystic and homophobic aspects of religious doctrine are being questioned, and many of those doing the questioning are the religious people themselves. Discrimination under the false color of religious freedoms are being confronted. Violence is on the decline. Tolerance is on the increase. Infant mortality is low, life expectancy is high, education and healthcare are available to more and more people. Obviously there will be some bumps along the way, Trump being the most recent. What you see as the decline of a civilization I see as the maturing of a civilization. You can choose to resist it kicking and screaming, but that is totally counterproductive. You would be better served by helping guide the changes.Brother Brian_{February 5, 2019
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BB, the first established evil of our day, the central cancer sending out metastases is the holocaust of our living posterity in the womb. 800+ millions in 40+ years, mounting up at about another million per week. This has utterly corrupted our views, values and institutions until we now have the passage or attempted passage of laws to essentially abort children during child birth. That is how sick and warped we are, and things are so bad that every dirty trick of agit prop, media lynching and more up to perversion of law and legislatures are now routinely used to further enable the worst holocaust in history. Where, as mass blood guilt is the most corrupting single influence, it is utterly unsurprising to see the undermining of basic moral truth, moral knowledge and soundness in law and society -- especially when matters connected to sexual behaviour are in the stakes. Your attempt to play with the term "radical agenda" needs to be assessed against that backdrop. In point of fact, the turning from ever so many long established evils was by the grounding of principle and the heart-softening influence of gospel ethics. What is at work today is instead the very opposite principle, the dismissal of objective moral truth, the resort to relativism and subjectivism (by which the would-be reformer is automatically in the wrong), thence to the nihilistic principle that might and/or manipulation make right. That is why crooked yardsticks are now being set up under false colour of law and demand conformity. That is the agit prop strategist's dream, as if crookedness in the established standard for straightness then what is genuinely so cannot pass the demand to conform to crookedness. That is a nightmare, and it is why our civilisation's ships of state are ever more determinedly heading out on voyages of folly. Such will not, cannot, end well. Our grandchildren, in desperate plight at the foot of cliffs, will rightly call us accursed. KF PS: The hit on Rao (an indo-American woman).kairosfocus_{February 5, 2019
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KF
The radical agendas now running rampant in our civilisation are patently incompatible with freedom, starting with conscience.
Banning pederastry in Ancient Greece would have been considered a radical agenda. The Civil War was fought over the radical anti-slavery agenda. Banning child labour was the result of a radical agenda. Allowing women to vote was the result of a radical agenda. Allowing interracial marriages was the result of a radical agenda. Allowing blacks to sit at the front of the bus was the result of a radical agenda. A five day work week was the result of a radical agenda. Not jailing homosexuals was the result of a radical agenda. The point I am making is that today’s radical agenda is often tomorrow’s concept of a just society.Brother Brian_{February 5, 2019
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F/N: One of the lurking realities is that when a crooked yardstick is made the standard under false colour of law, then people of conscience and principle will face the demand that they enable evil; evil sits in judgement of the good. The radical agendas now running rampant in our civilisation are patently incompatible with freedom, starting with conscience. The demand that I taint my conscience to survive or get ahead or thrive, is evil: what is one profited in gaining the world at the expense of one's soul, and woe to him through whom offences come. I repeat, as a claimed right is foremost a moral claim, to properly claim such you must be manifestly, demonstrably in the right. The alternative, will not end well. Again and again, it is manifest that ships of state all across our civilisation have set out on voyages of folly, starting with the worst holocaust in history, which is warping our key institutions of influence and governance. Such cannot end well. KF PS: I have already pointed to discussions and references that need to be seriously engaged.kairosfocus_{February 5, 2019
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A man who claims to value scientific principles and practices but refuses to do a simple experiment to answer a question he claims is important, cannot be taken seriously. But just to give you a small unearned clue, Bob: Whichever one answers. P.S. Bob, by your reasoning, all science experiments are subjective. Oops.ScuzzaMan_{February 5, 2019
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Bob O'H:
Also, which God? The Jewish God? The Sunni one? The Shi’ite God? Or perhaps a Christian one: Roman Catholic? One of the Orthodox churches? Anglican? Plymouth Brethren (they’re the guys who told my dad that he was the Devil, because he was going out with my mum)? Baptist? Mormon? There are just so many to chose from, all with different ideas.
Same God- the God of Abraham- worshipped differently.ET_{February 5, 2019
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Scuzzaman @ 54 - I'm having difficulty seeing how having a personal relationship with God can be objective. Also, which God? The Jewish God? The Sunni one? The Shi'ite God? Or perhaps a Christian one: Roman Catholic? One of the Orthodox churches? Anglican? Plymouth Brethren (they're the guys who told my dad that he was the Devil, because he was going out with my mum)? Baptist? Mormon? There are just so many to chose from, all with different ideas. And once I do, which articles of faith are objectively moral? If having a personal relationship with God leads to objective morality, then presumably everyone who has had this personal relationship will agree on moral matters. Have they written down this agreement somewhere?Bob O'H_{February 5, 2019
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Hi Bob @ 57- That is easy to explain from an ID perspective- genetic entropy, ie a corruption of the original design. However, the wide distribution of zero-fitness individuals seems to fly in the face of natural selection.ET_{February 5, 2019
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ET @ 50 - if homosexuality goes against nature, how come we see it in so many species?Bob O'H_{February 5, 2019
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Ed George:
I understand that it is your opinion that it goes against nature, but who determines what nature entails?
Except it isn't my opinion. And nature is screaming back at us with the diseases and afflictions that come with it
With regard to it being eliminated by natural selection it would first have to be heritable.
Genetic entropyET_{February 5, 2019
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KF
Kindly observe the linked major paper and book at points 27 and 29 in comment 18. KF
This OP is about objective morality and objective truth. My example is completely on topic. ET
It is. It even goes against nature. If natural selection were an actual force it would have eliminated that trait.
I understand that it is your opinion that it goes against nature, but who determines what nature entails? Not you and not me. The best we can say is that we don’t know. With regard to it being eliminated by natural selection it would first have to be heritable. I have not read any research that concludes that same sex attraction is heritable. The bigger question tends to be whether it becomes fixed during fetal development (ie born with it) or during the first few years after birth (ie acquired). Maybe my conclusion that it is not objectively wrong is, itself, wrong. But that brings back the fact that whether we perceive something to be objectively wrong depends on the circumstances and experiences that the individual is exposed to.Ed George_{February 5, 2019
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Bob "how I can know that it is an objective morality" A scientist might advise that you do the experiment. The experiment of encountering God on a personal basis has been repeated so many times only the basest arrogance leads us to discount it out of hand. But until you do it yourself you no more know if it is true or false than the latest medical "innovation": “…even the ideal influenza vaccine, matched perfectly to circulating strains of wild influenza and capable of stopping all influenza viruses, can only deal with a small part of the ‘flu’ problem because most ‘flu’ appears to have nothing to do with influenza. Every year, hundreds of thousands of respiratory specimens are tested across the US. Of those tested, on average 16% are found to be influenza positive. “…It’s no wonder so many people feel that ‘flu shots’ don’t work: for most flus, they can’t.” --Peter Doshi, BMJ 2013; 346:f3037 (Yes, I used "innovation" as a euphemism for "fraud". There's a crisis of repeatability in modern science because people are starting to catch on that science is no more reliable than scientists. Do the experiment yourself. It is the only way to know.)ScuzzaMan_{February 5, 2019
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EG, there is a thread as just linked that is open where what seems a habitual topic on your part can be discussed. It has been open for some days and your absence is duly noted. Kindly observe the linked major paper and book at points 27 and 29 in comment 18. KFkairosfocus_{February 5, 2019
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If the a-mats are right then objective morality doesn't exist. However if the a-mats were right then we wouldn't exist, either. :cool: Bob asks what is the objective morality? Start with the Ten Commandments, Bob.ET_{February 5, 2019
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BO'H: The grand sez who implicitly assumes that especially moral claims can never be true beyond opinion and/or imposition by might and manipulation, thus can be discarded to convenience by attacking the man and claiming that appeals to authority are fallacious -- classic, nihilistic cultural marxist agit prop stunts. This manifestly and dangerously fails on multiple levels; cf here for some discussion. Indeed, it is corrosive to civilisation, given the context of enabling of the ongoing worst holocaust in history. KFkairosfocus_{February 5, 2019
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Ed George:
For example, if you had asked me thirty years ago if homosexuality was immoral and perverted I would have argued that that was an objective truth.
It is. It even goes against nature. If natural selection were an actual force it would have eliminated that trait. Millions of people just don't care any more. They are tired of fighting against the irrational left.ET_{February 5, 2019
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I have never understood the passion with which some people argue over objective morality. I happen to believe in objective morals but that not all moral values are objective. And how we interpret even objective moral values is definitely subjective. For example, if you had asked me thirty years ago if homosexuality was immoral and perverted I would have argued that that was an objective truth. Today, however, I don’t hold that view. Millions of people have changed their views on the morality of homosexuality. So the question is, is homosexuality objectively immoral and we are just deceiving ourselves? Or were we deceiving ourselves thirty years ago when we believed that it was objectively wrong?Ed George_{February 5, 2019
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JAD - if I'm correct that there is no objective morality, then (as far as I can see), I am right by my standards, and possibly by your, or Barry's, or Scuzzaman's. If I'm wrong, then I'd like to know what this objective morality is, and how I can know that it is an objective morality, as opposed to a subjective morality that is strongly believed by its adherents. You write that the only reason you can think that Seversky & I are here is "that [we] are self-centered and intolerant". I don't understand the logic behind this. We are not trying to force our morality onto you - we don't believe that it is the One True Morality, so in a free society the only way we can get you to accept our moral views is by discussion and persuasion.Bob O'H_{February 5, 2019
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What is the point of moral subjectivists like Bob or Serversky in even being here? If nobody is right about morality then moral subjectivists like them certainly cannot be right. So why do they persist? What are they trying to prove? The only reason that I can think of is that they are self-centered and intolerant. Of course, what else would you expect from a moral subjectivist? Obviously moral objectivists do not believe that everybody is right about morality (that's the point of an objective transcendent standard) but it does not follow from that that nobody is right about morality. The latter is self-refuting because it’s making a universal truth claim about moral truth which is doing exactly what the subjectivists are claiming cannot be done. If they were really intellectually honest about their so-called beliefs Bob and Seversky would move along because there is nothing to say here. So called moral subjectivism is basically moral nihilism, which is about nothing. Therefore, they have nothing to say.john_a_designer_{February 5, 2019
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By a standard discoverable through logic and first principles. You are welcome to disavow either or both. Please do, for "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine."ScuzzaMan_{February 5, 2019
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BA
Ed, You have never addressed the question in the OP, much less answered it.
I have addressed it to my satisfaction. I have no need nor desire to address any question to the satisfaction of everyone else.Ed George_{February 5, 2019
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Barry @ 42 - is it possible to provide a summary in less than 22 pages? In his first paragraph, Leff describes a paradox, but I don't know what you & kf mean by a fallacy:
I want to believe - and so do you - in a complete, transcendent,and immanent set of propositions about right and wrong, findable rules that authoritatively and unambiguously direct us how to live righteously. I also want to believe and so do you in no such thing, but rather that we are wholly free, not only to choose for ourselves what we ought to do, but to decide for ourselves, individually and as a species,what we ought to be. What we want, Heaven help us, is simultaneously to be perfectly ruled and perfectly free, that is, at the same time to discover the right and the good and to create it.
I think he does nicely nail the essence of the discussion. Barry @ 43 - I've asked the same question 3 times - by who’s standard? So far the question has been ignored. If you don't have an answer to that, then please say so and we can move on. If you do have an answer, then please give it and we can move on.Bob O'H_{February 5, 2019
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