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Author Topic:   Scientific Morality? - (The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris)
Tempe 12ft Chicken
Member (Idle past 335 days)
Posts: 438
From: Tempe, Az.
Joined: 10-25-2012


Message 23 of 34 (677089)
10-26-2012 5:05 PM


Atheism leads to immorality?
So, I am currently halfway through with the second of these videos, the debate between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig. I find Harris' ideas extremely interesting as far as I have heard at this point. I have some major issues with a lot of what William Lane Craig is stating though. As he makes his arguments, he claims that we will make two points, the first is that with God, there is objective morals and the second is that without God, there cannot be objective morals.
Now, looking at his first argument, it seems that we are then torn by the idea of which God is actually determining these objective morals. Without knowledge of a rule giver's actual wishes, should he/she/it exist, it seems that each individual society will simply make up its own objective morals for that specific society, based off what the culture's deities wish. There is simply no objectivity within this ideal unless we were to force all individuals on this planet to worship the same rule giver. Likewise, with his argument that with atheism there can be no objective morals, I find this argument lacking as well. Harris describes a perfectly objective basis for morals when he states that it is the minimum that can be done so that not all sentient beings suffer. True, this is not a moral ground that we would like people to live in, since it leaves a large amount of room open to interpretation, but when looked at less as a structure for all of society and more as the basic guidelines for personal interaction, you can see how this idea works. By looking at only two individuals involved in a moral dilemma, we see that if each individual is doing the minimum for this decision, then they are both trying to ensure that the minimum number of sentient beings suffer. Since only two are involved, it should be easy to find a moral solution that can benefit each person involved.
In retrospect this gives morality with a God no objectivity because there is no baseline that fits across the board because there are too many different gods. Whereas, morality without God begins with the objective baseline of that which can eliminate some suffering from some of the sentient beings on the planet. After that, this baseline can be used to build other moral ideals upon this by looking at how many would suffer in varying degrees.

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 Message 25 by Jazzns, posted 10-27-2012 5:07 PM Tempe 12ft Chicken has not replied

  
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