Atheism Cannot Rationally Explain Morals.

No. It is not a question of your opinion making things objectively true, nor does it become objectively true through consensus.If you think the Nazis actions were moral then that means you think the Nazis actions were moral. That's it. It doesn't make them moral. Whether or not something is moral, is relative to any given system of morality. I suppose in some systems of morality, the actions would be considered moral. Not really, no. Nastiness and niceness are names to behaviours that can evolve. Whether they are moral or not, requires someone (ie a subject) to make that distinction. Those someones can evolve too. No, niceness doesn't require emotions. Niceness is just a name given to a class of strategy. The word 'nice' may be emotionally laden, but the strategy can exist without someone calling it 'nice' or feeling that it is 'nice'. Animals can behave in certain ways, and some animals may regard those behaviours as belonging to the strategy of 'nice' or 'nasty' if they had language to describe them. The strategies exist. There is not however, an objective truth as to whether they are 'nice' or 'nasty'. That is a value that exists only in the minds of subjective beings. Yes, they 'don't exist' in the sense that moral value judgements don't exist outside of minds. But that's hardly proving your point, that's just another way of saying 'subjective'. It doesn't prove they are unexplainable. Thank you. Good good. Message 233I agree with Jesus on a number of points, but not this one (or indeed the similar one about lusting after a woman being adulterous).I have of course, not made morals undefinable and nonexistent. I've called them subjective, like our opinion of the taste of an apple or the preference for Mozart. If the taste of an apple is 'relativistic imaginations' then sure. That's basically it. Make up your mind! You said before: 'at best this is an explanation of things happening' - now you are saying it is something else? I described how different strategies can be optimal, the 'nice' label was used to give certain classes of strategies a name and is a subjective judgement that I think many people would agree is suitable. We, generally, call classes of behavioural strategy I labelled as 'nice' as 'morally good' once we add all our culture and learning on top of our perceptions of those strategies. I wouldn't say 'not actually proceeding from emotions' - I'd in fact argue that emotions are an important part of the process of moral judgements. I said, and repeated several times, that emotions themselves are not morals. Besides - emotions are as unreal as morality by your definition of what is real. Emotions don't exist except subjectively. There is no hatred floating around in space you can point at. Hatred only exists in haters, that is, hatred is relative to a subject. It is subjective.Instruments are not music in a similar way. I can't speak to what you call a 'real sense'. The strategies just are. How we characterise them is entirely up to us. Whether or not a behavioural strategy is 'nice' or 'unforgiving' is a judgement that exists only in our minds. They don't exist outside of our minds. However, we can define a 'forgiving' strategy to have certain criteria so that we can basically agree whether any given strategy is 'forgiving' or not - for the purposes of using language to talk about them.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Huh? Of course the word subjective is relative. Subjective MEANS different for each person - i.e. relative to the subject. That doesn't follow at all. We non-Nazis agree collectively that some of the things they did were wrong. Collective agreement is as close to objectivity as we can get. Remember the social contract? Child molesting is a breach of the social contract. One person can not have a contract with himself so one person does not have his own private morality. It worked until the rest of us intervened. It was a clash of different moralities.Take slavery as another example. It worked just fine for centuries. It was supported by Christians, based on an "absolute morality" that came from the same source as your "absolute morality". You're right back to the same problem that you haven't addressed: If there exists a being outside the universe that is all knowing and absolute in its morality, then YOU still don't know what that absolute morality is. YOU are not omniscient. And the fact that there are thousands of different sects with thousands of different ideas of "absolute morality" means that you don't even have a collective approximation of objectivity. None of that says anything about morality.Also, Romans 11 says that God's judgements are unsearchable and unfathomable - i.e. YOU have no way of knowing absolutely what they are. No, it means impossible to understand or interpret. The Bible is shooting you in the foot.

I think I see the problem. You have addressed it already....lets use logic: Objective means relative to the object. If one claims that the object of all morality is God, one concludes that there is no further discussion since God never changes, is absolute, etc etc... The believer would argue that as a child of God they have access to and awareness OF the moral absolutes. Telling them that even their Bible is subjective merely frustrates and stiffens their resolve to be absolutely right---as their Creator would logically expect them to be. Right? Put another way---He is the object of our faith and we are all subjects of the King. Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

Why would one make that claim? That believer would be contradicting his own Bible. Look at Dawn Bertot's own quotes. God is beyond our understanding. That's common behaviour of people who are proven wrong.

But that is certainly not what the Bible stories say Phat. The stories show God changing, God needing Her morality checked, God changing Her mind, God far from absolute. The willfully ignorant believer might behave that way. They were certainly not created that brain dead though.

Well that's loosely correct but not technically correct. Its an oversimplification of the actual facts. You see there are absolutes. Lol. Thanks for that observation and keeping the ball rolling. I should be able to get to all those numerous posts this evening. A lot left to discuss I hope. We are just getting started.Dawn BertotEdited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

Er, have you ever received any training in logic? I took that class in my very first semester of college (1969, gracias a CDR Spock)."Logic" comes from the Greek verb, "lego", meaning to place in order (related to the English "lay", which is a cognate of the German "legen" which means the same thing). So the idea is that you are laying your thoughts down in an orderly manner. "lego" also refers to speech as in "say" since you are saying something intelligible instead of just uttering nonsense (ie, "lalao", just going "la-la-la-la" making no sense; seen in "echolalia", a condition where someone just repeats what they hear).So then "logic" is not just some neat word you can throw around (much as Star Trek:TOS admittedly did do). It actually means something.Formal logic is based on syllogisms, logical constructs in which you proceed form two premises to a conclusion. Syllogisms can be chained together wherein the conclusion of one syllogism becomes a premise of the next. We see that all the time in combinatorial logic networks formed by Boolean algebra (think of computer hardware logic circuitry design).Syllogisms are never concerned with truth or falsehood, but rather only with validity. That is an extremely important distinction to be made. Now, if a syllogism is valid, then if you feed it true premises you will get a true conclusion. Otherwise, you have no idea what you have. If your syllogism is invalid, then you do not know whether your conclusion is true or false, but rather only that you don't know. If your syllogism is valid but your premises are not true, then again you have absolutely no idea whether your conclusion is true or not.Let's use logic. Theology uses logic. Long chains of logic, long networks of logic. All of which can quickly fall apart if any single premise in those long chains and networks turn out to not be valid. Or if any of the many axiomatic premises underlying that entire intricate house-of-cards were to turn out to not be true, then what happens to the entire theology, those long chains and networks of syllogisms?Are you really sure you want to appeal to logic? Do you really think that logic is your friend?Now, "theology". I have a very definite meaning for that word, though I'm sure that it is one that you would not agree with in your "fallen state."Do you believe in God? No, you don't. You believe in your theology and what it says you need to believe about "God". Do you believe in the Bible? No, you don't, you believe in your theology and what it says about the Bible and about what you must believe about the Bible. Etc.Nobody believes in "God' nor in "the Bible" nor in anything else. All that they actually believe in is their own theology. In their own understanding/misunderstanding about God, etc. Everybody believes in their own theology and everybody builds their own theology out of their own misunderstandings of whatever it is that they are trying to pattern their theology after.Do please think about that for a few moments and it should become very clear. Or it will not become very clear in which case you are a lost soul. Sorry -- but if you really want to discuss it I am available. Uh, no. Sorry. Objective means objective! What part of that did you not understand? Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot-Oscar????OK, you are so enamoured with logic, so do please follow my logic.I am an atheist. That means that I do not believe in the gods.I am also an agnostic. That means that I believe that humans cannot know anything about the supernatural. The supernatural is undetectable and hence unknowable and untestable.Does God exist? Does Thor exist? Does Amaterasu exist? Do Bel and Anu exist? Does Luke Skywalker exist? Does CDR Spock exist?To all of those I would say, "Yes, they do exist." We know that they exist because we created them and we created their stories. And since we created both them and their stories, we are entirely free to analyze and discuss their stories (which we also created). Do please note that I included that to short-circuit a typical fundamentalist/creationist argument of "well, if God doesn't exist, then why could you ever say what he would or would not do?"The real question is whether such an Ultimate as GOD exists. Well, quite frankly, that never ever comes up. Does some Ultimate exist? Who knows? All our minds are finite! God is INFINITE! How could our finite human minds ever possibly be able to begin to comprehend the INFINITE! And even then, how could our finite minds even begin to attempt to describe the INFINITE!??IOW, you have no comprehension of what GOD really is. Complete and utter bullshit!Moral absolutes are outside of human consciousnes.

It has always amazed me about you Jar, that you do not see the difference between an assertion and an argument. You assert things as if they were an actual argument. You seem to be oblivious to this fact, or you just don't care that you never present arguments. Here's an illustration. You claim to know about God from the Bible or atleast you speak about his character from the Bible, but never take into consideration all that the Bible has to say about him. I don't know if you do this to be malicious or just plain stupidSo how can a God as described in the Bible , know the very number of your hairs on your head and if a sparrow falls, it is not unknown to him, be as incompetent as you claim. So set out the argument that demonstrates your baseless assertionThe only nonsense here is for someone to claim someone has not read the bible, then ignore the passages where it clearly states God is infinite in wisdom. One thing is for sure, we could conclude that Jar is not infinte in wisdomMeant to bring this up earlier but forgot. There are so many unqualified Bible scholars out there Jar, we were hoping you could give us a commentary of the Bible. Staring with the insightful wisdom, that God did not actually know where Able was when he asked Cain, Abel's location.You don't actually think anybody here takes your comments about the Bible and the nature of God seriously do you? You exhibit the worst form of maliciousness and wilful stupidity Im sure, someone even as simple minded as yourself can understand that if two people assign a different Socalled meaning to something, those meanings cannot both be correct? That's because meanings don't have reality, especially in a meaningless universe. It should be obvious even to you Jar that when you say the universe has no meaning, you would need to demonstrate that for it to be true. Hence your postulating that meaning has meaning, is quite obviously nonsensicalEven living beings cannot ACTUALLY assign meaning. If I imagine I am creation and that I created all that exists, that's just an imagination Jar, it's unreal like the imaginary meanings you ascribe to things. Wow seriously? When I first heard you say God did not know where Abel was , I thought you were joking around. But when I read comments like this one above, I think man, he really is that simple, bless his heart. And he actually has the backbone to get on a website and debate issues.Jar, when I say they cannot be held responsible, I mean there is no rational way to accuse them of wrong doing, no one has a right to condemn thier actions if morality is relative, or nonexistent. if it's just a perception or consensus. I don't mean someone didn't try, I mean there's no rational way to do itHence, Jar your meanings you ascribe to things and the meanings you ascribe to the actions of people are imaginary, just like your morality Jar did God know where Able was, when he asked Where is your brother Able? Can't wait for that commentary you going to write.Dawn BertotEdited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

No it tells me your not paying attention. It tells me that morals cannot and do not exist, whether you imagine them or not. If I imagine I'm creation and that I created everything, that does not make it real.
You don't get to ascribe meaning to things that already existed before you. Givi ing them names like morality subjective or objective doesn't change that they are JUST matter in motion, in your meaningless universeAnimals were doing the same things you were long before your pathetic existence. When humans start taking life doesn't make it murder or not, because you decided it. You starting to get it? And your above comment is an example that you do not understand. I don't care whether think he's wrong or right. You have no rational way to decide either way and you certainly don't have a right to condemn anyone else.Remember the expression A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME, IS STILL JUST A ROSE. Seems that that writer was a better philosopher than you See what I mean No, no bind and I'm sure it's confusing for you but we will get you through the it. Your imaginations are not real, calling things moral or immoral, that existed long before you, does not make it real after you come along. It just means you gave an arbitrary term. It's still just a rose, if you decide to call it such. Are you starting to get it?Your pathetic species decided to give slinging poop at eachother by primates a name, primates did not. In reality it Doesn't matter. In reality you do not actually have morality, it's an invention of your mind, just like me imagining I created everythingAnd that's only the first logical problem with you thinking, you actually have a moral or morality. Even I I grant it's existence, it's hopelessly bogged down with inconsistent arbitrary nonsense [qs]Now that is the biggest non sequitur I've seen for a while. Why was Hitler objectively wrong and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were absolutely right? Please explain.God is infinite in power and wisdom you are not. Hitler was committing murder, the Japanese were killing and torturing people. We were trying to stop them, they would not stop. Romans 13, says that the powers that be, are ordained of God. If one is acting in opposition to God's word, we have moral right based on infinte wisdom to stop them, or atleast the government does, not the individual. While God sets up all governments, governments can go against his divine will. His absolute morality"Blessed is the nation who's God is Jehovah" It's much much worse than that Tangle, morality does not exist at all in your purely naturalistic world, subjective or objective. When animals act in the very same way you do in what you call morality, why do you say they are not moralYour Fred example is starting in the middle of the argument, you need to get more fundamental and basic. For example, if I disagree that Fred's behaviour is moral or immoral before of after a tumor, how wold you demonstrate otherwise, five you Atheistic positionDawn Bertot

It's not beside the point, it is the point. Now we are starting to narrow it down,. Good. While your imaginations exist, so to speak, they are not real. I can imagine things that clearly do not exist. I can imagine myself flying over the countryside, so much so that I can actually see it, but that doesn't make it real. Now watch this, if I can imagine things that are actually not real, that should demonstrate that imaginations are not realHence morality or as it is described in a purely naturalistic enviornment cannot exist either. I could throw a term at the animal kingdoms action called morality, but we would now immediately, that was not true Certainly it does. Objective and subjective are just more words to define something that doesn't need defining, namely things happening in reality. Those words including morality don't give things in reality MORE meaning. They are ALREADY what they are, your arbitrary descriptions don't make them more than what they are. Hence morality only exists as an imagination, like me imagining I'm the creator of everything Ok, if you think I haven't addressed it, provide the single argument from any individual here that refutes my contentionsThe first part of your sentence is nonsensical. You need to demonstrate that an imagined thing is actually real, before it can be described as morality, subjective or objective. I've already demonstrated to many times that your or my imaginations do not exist in reality, that is they are not real. I'll try again. If I imagine myself flying simply using my body and arms, it's not real, I I imagine myself walking down the street, it's not actually real, even if I go do it, my imagination of doing it is not real.Imaging something like morality, does not make it real, in a purely naturalistic universe.. hence, explanations of moralities evolving, is a nonsensical idea, the same way a rose is actually
a rose , because I call it a rose. No, bad theology is picking and choosing from his words what you like or don't like. Or picking what fits or doesn't fit. Hence your example of the golden rule onlySo when Jesus said, You will KNOW The TRUTH and the truth will set you free, what truth was he refering to and is it actually knowable?Patently stupid is believing a person can have a moral and it be subjective depending on what anyone believes, wishes or imagines. That's actually willful stupidityDawn Bertot

No you are getting the cart before the horse. Since your imaginations can never be real it would follow that it cannot assign meanings, to a physical property, that it does not already posses. A rose by any other name. If you want to believe you've done this then it will only be in your imagination. Reality does not care about your definitions of it. Long after your gone it will still just be what it is.If I imagine myself flying over the countryside, using just my arms, that doesn't make it real. In fact there is nothing you can imagine that is real. IOWS the specific imagination. If you think so, give me an exampleThere is nothing you can imagine that is actually real, including morality. You and your meaningless universe, is literally the blind leading the blind. And I'm not taking a shot at blind people there, I've never really liked that statement Well to be absolutelyfair I've read this three of four times to see if it might contradict anything I am saying, it does not. Even if the above things are true, it doesn't demonstrate that a moral is possible. A moral is an imaginary thing applied to a physical property to make something right or wrong, moral or immoral. Something may be more advantageous or not, but then we may assume that accross any species. Hence no actual moralityAt best morality is a made up concept in a purely naturalistic society. Isn't it interesting that this so called emergence cannot show a causality between brain and consciouness As I've demonstrated, for your illustrations of biological functions, synergies or otherwise, to actually have moral meaning, they would need to be remotely consistent accross species. Heck,they can even have consistency withing your own species. Long disortations only explains complicated versions of the samething, ie survival of the fittest, but it doesn't show that actual morality exists, in a meaningless universe.To demonstrate this absolutely, without a disortation, as is usually Characteristic of you, give me the single argument form that material that you presented that shows actually, how morality exists. You cloud up the issue with verbosity assuming you have made your point. You havent. But if you think I have missed something, give it to me on a single sentence or single argument Which demonstrates my point that your alleged morality cannot exist in reality. Why from a purely naturalistic standpoint are the Nazis actions different than anything you would see in the animal kingdom. The term subjective morality, is nothing but a worthless empty nonsensical concept thrown at reality. Goodness man look at what you wrote above and listen to it, it's double talk nonsesne Son, your at a lose for a lot of reasons. If your above comments do not demonstrate to you that your morality is just junk in motion, nothing ever will. Now pay very close attention. Notice the logical conclusion of your subjective morality approach. Given your position, there is literally NOTHING and I mean NOTHING that could be considered IMMORAL in the future and in different societies as long as enough people agree with it. That means if I could get enough people to agree and I mean actually agree, a person could rape and kill as many persons as they choose, if we could get enough people signed up for that and say it's ok or moralThis is literally what your doctrine teaches. The conclusions of subjective morality therefore have no real meaning at all, IT'S JUST MAKING JUNK AS YOU GO ALONG, hoping everyone else will agree. Hence as I have demonstrated, morality is just a made up term to justify actionsSeriously RAZD, Normalish Bell like Curves. More contrived verbiage that makes morality a joke. I challenge you to demonstrate that the conclusion of your doctrine, is not, as I have set it out. Literally that nothing given enough time will not be considered immoral., or that anything now immoral could become moral. What thinking person would by into that type of nonsense. Oh yeah wait, An Atheist. That is his only option. Even if I didn't believe in God I would not accept such silliness.Changing behaviors described as morality,is actually nothing but matter in motion.Dawn Bertot

And it's not subjectively true through either of these either. Subjective is a made up word, that has no counterpart in reality Well as far as I can see, you just articulated yourself out of actually having and possessing a real morality. You have demonstrated my primary argument as true. That being, that imaginations of the mind are not real things. Thank you Well I really should just let you finish my thread and argument, that Atheist cannot rationally explain Morals, your doing a much better job for my argument. Thank you Again thank you. Are you sure you would rather represent my position, your already doing a good job But then of course there would be nothing to explain if they don't actually exist outside the mind, correct. Making up words in our minds for things that already have thier full meaning in reality, dont need explanations, correct? Or if we decide they do actually have more menaing we are just imagining things, correct? And that's the best we can do. You see modulous your definition of morals is an endless loop of hopeless nonsenseIt is proving my point that even the word subjective is an imagination of the mind. There is no way for the word itself to have any actual meaning in reality. It means relative or nonexistent. It would be like saying I'm creating a word called subjective to describe another nonexistent thing called morality. I'm going to use one nonexistent thing to describe another nonexistent thing. Ok so if animals only appear to be nice or morally good. How did you determine that humans ACTUALLY are nice and morally good, since our behavior, comes from some trail (no pun intended) of thiers.. Indirectly, You seem to be saying that humans are not actually good, that's simply a term we've come up with to describe our actions, that already have biological meaning, that really need no more description. Did I nail it? Well, no I would say that the word Anger is not a real thing. Clearly people can laugh and throw fits, that's they can have biological displays. However, the word hatred or anger do not have actual existence, like Nice or Helpful. In other words (no pun intended), if I make up a word, it can't give the biological process more meaning in reality. A moral property, so to speak. Hence it's not actually possible for you as an Atheist to have an actual moral, except that which is imaginedOne other point I would make, it's not by My Definiton, it's by what reality will allow. So how would a thing called morality Actually exist outside our minds? Even if we throw terms at it does it change what it actuall is and if it exist before humans does our description make it have more meaningDawn Bertot

Which of course means you don't actually have a thing called morality. You have invented morality a thing that is re I don't know why you fellas can't see that you can't make things up and all of a sudden they become real. You can't get close to objective or subjective or Wrong or Right, because these are things that absolutely cannot exist in your purely naturalistic existence. You have made them up. It doesn't matter if you put a tag on it calling it subjective or objective, those things don't exist. You can't start assuming you have something you do notI have demonstrated that your actions and existence is no different than that of the animal kingdom. You don't just get to assume it is. You would need to demonstrate that subjectivity even exists. But how in the world will you do that. Perceptions and imaginations are not real things Your social contract in nothing more than garbage happening, nothing different than the animal kingdom. You assign it meaning because it directly relates to you. Big deal, that does not mean you have a morality, you have junk happening.The fact that you admit in numerous years hence, everything you now believe is moral could be completely different, shows beyond a doubt that you have just thrown words at things that do not exists, ie your morality.You have no hope of demonstrating that the word subjective is real thing. It's a contrivance of the mind. A rose by any other name is still a rose. Humans doing things, is just that, biological life forms doing things,like any species.Ringo, assigning a name to something in reality, cannot give it more ACTUAL meaning. It is what what it is, even if you were never around to describe it. Hence, you Dontand cannot have an actual morality. Hence you cannot explain something that does not exist Your above statement makes absolutely no sense. Certainly, if there exists such a being that is all knowing, he would be able to communicate to me his will. If there exists enough evidence to support that he exists, why wouldn't I be able to know his morality is absolute.Varying views have nothing to with the fact that if God exists, he would logically be absolute in his characteristics. Wow you are a confused fellow. Of course those verses say something about morality, God's character is his morality. Because he is God he is absolute morality. I don't need to be omniscient to know that.Right his judgements are unsearchable and unfathomable, why do I need to be omniscient to know that. No it means ABOVE scrutiny, hence absolute.Therefore I can know he's absolute without understanding him completely

Why do you assume it is necessary, to comprehend God, to know that God exists. I can't comprehend the universe or why it's here, from a humanist standpoint but I know that it is, correct? And what if the universe is infinite, can I not know it exists even if it is?How's that for logic. Luckly, Reality Trumps (Donald) a man made thing called logic. While it has its applications it was not necessary to reality before humans arrived, correct. Well that's absolutely not true. But let's assume it is true. How in the world, would made up subjective morality, help you, to know that absolutely, to know moral absolutes are outside of human consciouness? Is yours an absolute true statement. Even if subjective morality, did exist, which it cannot in reality, but even if it did, it's hopelessly lost in inconsistent endless stupidityThat's assuming things like inconsistent and relative are actual things and they, could actually exist in a purely naturalistic universe. It may just all be relative therefore irrelivantDawn BertotEdited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

This entire rambling mess boils down to us saying that morality is a name we give to a category of behaviour that we feel is 'good' - that benefits the human race generally. (And the converse, that immoral behaviour is bad for us generally.)It is indeed a human invention, what's regarded as good, moral, beneficial and what's bad, harmful, detrimental has changed over time and is different between cultures. At an individual level it varies based on personality, illness, drugs, upbringing, religious belief and age. It is therefore anything but absolute and unchanging..We can evidence all this with history, anthropology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology and behavioural psychology. You yourself know all this to be true.As far as I understand your position, it's that all of that is made up stuff by people and that morality is god given and absolute.Well to make a start on that you'd have to demonstrate the existence of this god - which you can't. Or demonstrate the existence of an absolute morality, which you can't. Of the two, I suggest the latter was the easier of two impossible tasks, why not have a crack at it?But just to be clear, quoting chunks of fantasy novels isn't going to be accepted as evidence.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.