1712 replies to this topic

[Vardarac]

 

Another thing I considered today was that greed is evolutionarily advantageous. In times of plenty, we desire greater plenty still, for that is the only thing that sates and secures a mind that was never evolutionarily acclimated to the lifestyle we have today. We can see from the apologist's final point that this is basically an argument from incredulity; "nature could not explain why we have desires to the degree that we do."

 

Greed can be advantageous in certain circumstances.  Almost no traits are universally advantageous since what is disadvantageous or advantageous depends on the environment.  There is a place for altruism in social animals, and its there because there are times when altruism is advantageous.

 

This is one of the reasons Social Darwinism (which had no legitimate foundation in Darwinism)  is toxic when applied to social species, 

 

You are right, fitness is context-dependent. I should say that greed can be evolutionarily advantageous.

[Duchykins]

So you say it might be true that some peoples desire for god might be true and then you say some might not be true.   Which is it?

The Argument From Desire

• Premise 1: Every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.
• Premise 2: But there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.
• Conclusion: Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire.

This something is what people call "God" and "life with God forever."
 

The first premise implies a distinction of desires into two kinds: innate and externally conditioned, or natural and artificial. We naturally desire things like food, drink, sex, sleep, knowledge, friendship and beauty; and we naturally shun things like starvation, loneliness, ignorance and ugliness. We also desire (but not innately or naturally) things like sports cars, political office, flying through the air like Superman, the land of Oz and a Red Sox world championship.

Peter Kreeft debates Richard Norman regarding the Argument for Desire on the excellent podcast episode of
Unbelievable with Justin Brierley

Now there are differences between these two kinds of desires. We do not, for example, for the most part, recognize corresponding states of deprivation for the second, the artificial, desires, as we do for the first. There is no word like "Ozlessness" parallel to "sleeplessness." But more importantly, the natural desires come from within, from our nature, while the artificial ones come from without, from society, advertising or fiction. This second difference is the reason for a third difference: the natural desires are found in all of us, but the artificial ones vary from person to person.

The existence of the artificial desires does not necessarily mean that the desired objects exist. Some do; some don't. Sports cars do; Oz does not. But the existence of natural desires does, in every discoverable case, mean that the objects desired exist. No one has ever found one case of an innate desire for a nonexistent object.

The second premise requires only honest introspection. If someone defies it and says, "I am perfectly happy playing with mud pies, or sports cars, or money, or sex, or power," we can only ask, "Are you, really?" But we can only appeal, we cannot compel. And we can refer such a person to the nearly universal testimony of human history in all its great literature. Even the atheist Jean-Paul Sartre admitted that "there comes a time when one asks, even of Shakespeare, even of Beethoven, 'Is that all there is?'"

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." — C.S. Lewis

The conclusion of the argument is not that everything the Bible tells us about God and life with God is really so. What it proves is an unknown X, but an unknown whose direction, so to speak, is known. This X is more: more beauty, more desirability, more awesomeness, more joy. This X is to great beauty as, for example, great beauty is to small beauty or to a mixture of beauty and ugliness. And the same is true of other perfections.

But the "more" is infinitely more, for we are not satisfied with the finite and partial. Thus the analogy (X is to great beauty as great beauty is to small beauty) is not proportionate. Twenty is to ten as ten is to five, but infinity is not to twenty as twenty is to ten. The argument points down an infinite corridor in a definite direction. Its conclusion is not "God" as already conceived or defined, but a moving and mysterious X which pulls us to itself and pulls all our images and concepts out of themselves.

In other words, the only concept of God in this argument is the concept of that which transcends concepts, something "no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived" (1 Cor 2:9). In other words, this is the real God.

C. S. Lewis, who uses this argument in a number of places, summarizes it succinctly:

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. (Mere Christianity, Bk. III, chap. 10, "Hope")

Question 1: How can you know the major premise—that every natural desire has a real object—is universally true, without first knowing that this natural desire also has a real object? But that is the conclusion. Thus you beg the question. You must know the Conclusion to be true before you can know the major premise.

Reply: This is really not an objection to the argument from desire only, but to every deductive argument whatsoever, every syllogism. It is the old saw of John Stuart Mill and the nominalists against the syllogism. It presupposes empiricism—that is, that the only way we can ever know anything is by sensing individual things and then generalizing, by induction. It excludes deduction because it excludes the knowledge of any universal truths (like our major premise). For nominalists do not believe in the existence of any universals....except one (that all universals are only names).

This is very easy to refute. We can and do come to a knowledge of universal truths, like "all humans are mortal," not by sense experience alone (for we can never sense all humans) but through abstracting the common universal essence or nature of humanity from the few specimens we do experience by our senses. We know that all humans are mortal because humanity, as such, involves mortality, it is the nature of a human being to be mortal; mortality follows necessarily from its having an animal body. We can understand that. We have the power of understanding, or intellectual intuition, or insight, in addition to the mental powers of sensation and calculation, which are the only two the nominalist and empiricist give us. (We share sensation with animals and calculation with computers; where is the distinctively human way of knowing for the empiricist and nominalist?)

When there is no real connection between the nature of a proposition's subject and the nature of the predicate, the only way we can know the truth of that proposition is by sense experience and induction. For instance, we can know that all the books on this shelf are red only by looking at each one and counting them. But when there is a real connection between the nature of the subject and the nature of the predicate, we can know the truth of that proposition by understanding and insight—for instance, "Whatever has color must have size," or, "A Perfect Being would not be ignorant."

Question 2: Suppose I simply deny the minor premise and say that I just don't observe any hidden desire for God, or infinite joy, or some mysterious X that is more than earth can offer?

Reply: This denial may take two forms. First, one may say, "Although I am not perfectly happy now, I believe I would be if only I had ten million dollars, a Lear jet, and a new mistress every day." The reply to this is, of course, "Try it. You won't like it." It's been tried and has never satisfied. In fact, billions of people have performed and are even now performing trillions of such experiments, desperately seeking the ever-elusive satisfaction they crave. For even if they won the whole world, it would not be enough to fill one human heart.

Yet they keep trying, believing that "If only.. . Next time .. ." This is the stupidest gamble in the world, for it is the only one that consistently has never paid off. It is like the game of predicting the end of the world: every batter who has ever approached that plate has struck out. There is hardly reason to hope the present ones will fare any better. After trillions of failures and a one hundred percent failure rate, this is one experiment no one should keep trying.

A second form of denial of our premise is: "I am perfectly happy now." This, we suggest, verges on idiocy or, worse, dishonesty. It requires something more like exorcism than refutation. This is Meursault in Camus's The Stranger. This is subhuman, vegetation, pop psychology. Even the hedonist utilitarian John Stuart Mill, one of the shallowest (though cleverest) minds in the history of philosophy, said that "it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied."

Question 3: This argument is just another version of Anselm's ontological argument (see Argument 13 in The Handbook of Christian Apologetics), which is invalid. You argue to an objective God from a mere subjective idea or desire in you.

Reply: No, we do not argue from the idea alone, as Anselm does. Rather, our argument first derives a major premise from the real world of nature: that nature makes no desire in vain. Then it discovers something real in human nature—namely, human desire for something more than nature—which nature cannot explain, because nature cannot satisfy it. Thus, the argument is based on observed facts in nature, both outer and inner. It has data.

 

P2 states that there is a certain desire in all humans that cannot be satisfied by anything "in time".  

 

You never fixed this.

 

The whole argument is about proving the existence of something beyond time.

 

P2 already assumes the existence of something beyond time.

 

But let's put this aside for the moment.

 

Where is P2's validation?  Aside from implying that anyone who challenges the validity of P2 is dishonest, which is just a form of emotional blackmail.  (The second premise requires only honest introspection. )  

 

Even if it were not an appeal to emotion, "you'll see it if you just think hard about it" is not a logical way to substantiate the validity of P2.

And besides, we're all wasting our time.  You already admitted the argument is flawed.  It's useless.

[shadowhawk]

Is greed an argument for Atheism?  Is social Darwinism an argument or evidence for Atheism and why is it toxic?

[Vardarac]

Greed is unrelated to the existence of God, but its existence as the "unfulfillable desire" is one way of illustrating how the Argument from Desire fails to add anything to a case for God.

 

Social Darwinism (on a tangent) is both based on a poor understanding of biology and is toxic in the context of a society that believes basic civility and respect for human dignity should inform how we treat one another.

[shadowhawk]

My question was about Atheism, our topic.  Is greed good or bad or toxic?  Its natural and is it part of Social Darwinism?  Why should basic civility and respect for human dignity inform how we treat one another given Atheism.  Isn't the issue survivability?

[Duchykins]

Is greed an argument for Atheism?  Is social Darwinism an argument or evidence for Atheism and why is it toxic?

 

 

Greed is not an argument for atheism.  

 

Social Darwinism is not an argument for anything except for prejudice, callousness and ignorance (of evolution).  It's toxic because it discourages the kind of natural altruism that has generally always benefited us as a species (benefits other social species too).  It's toxic because there is nothing "social" about it.

Edited by Duchykins, 03 August 2015 - 12:04 AM.

[shadowhawk]

Well it is social but is it the survival of the fittest you don't like?  Shouldn't the less fit be weeded out of the gene pool as is the case with most creatures?  I fail to see this is not evidence for atheism.

[Duchykins]

Well it is social but is it the survival of the fittest you don't like?  Shouldn't the less fit be weeded out of the gene pool as is the case with most creatures?  I fail to see this is not evidence for atheism.

 

"Survival of the fittest," as commonly used by the public, is not rooted in evolutionary biology.  "Less fit" often turns out to be some human contrivance which has little to do with actual fitness in a biological context, or too narrow, unnatural and counter to social health.  This is actually a perfect reason we need to keep Orgel's Second Rule ("Evolution is cleverer than you are") in mind.

 

Social Darwinism in the creature of Herbert Spencer and Lamarckism, not Darwin nor Darwinian selection.  Darwin explicitly rejected the very concept of SD. He explicitly explained how social animals should be expected to have some sympathy for each other and a sense of cooperation.

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia...ocial_Darwinism

 

It may be that at the outset Darwin himself was not fully aware of the generality of the factor which he first invoked for explaining one series only of facts relative to the accumulation of individual variations in incipient species. But he foresaw that the term [evolution] which he was introducing into science would lose its philosophical and its only true meaning if it were to be used in its narrow sense only—that of a struggle between separate individuals for the sheer means of existence. And at the very beginning of his memorable work he insisted upon the term being taken in its "large and metaphorical sense including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny." [Quoting Origin of Species, chap. iii, p. 62 of first edition.]

 

While he himself was chiefly using the term in its narrow sense for his own special purpose, he warned his followers against committing the error (which he seems once to have committed himself) of overrating its narrow meaning. In The Descent of Man he gave some powerful pages to illustrate its proper, wide sense. He pointed out how, in numberless animal societies, the struggle between separate individuals for the means of existence disappears, how struggle is replaced by co-operation, and how that substitution results in the development of intellectual and moral faculties which secure to the species the best conditions for survival. He intimated that in such cases the fittest are not the physically strongest, nor the cunningest, but those who learn to combine so as mutually to support each other, strong and weak alike, for the welfare of the community. "Those communities," he wrote, "which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring" (2nd edit., p. 163). The term, which originated from the narrow Malthusian conception of competition between each and all, thus lost its narrowness in the mind of one who knew Nature.

 

 

 

Darwin thought SD (though it wasn't called SD back then) was a social evil that undermined our natural propensity for empathy and altruism as a social species (which was selected precisely because it is advantageous to social species), and cautioned against its application.  He additionally argued that even if we label a portion of our own people as unfit, there already existed a natural check on this (sexual selection) and would be something we should not try to encourage or enforce:

 

"Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

 

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. ... We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected."

 

 

Social Darwinism is ideological, malformed garbage.

 

You think it's evidence for atheism because you are desperate for atheists like me to be evil, degenerate people.

Edited by Duchykins, 03 August 2015 - 12:59 AM.

[Vardarac]

My question was about Atheism, our topic.  Is greed good or bad or toxic?  Its natural and is it part of Social Darwinism?  Why should basic civility and respect for human dignity inform how we treat one another given Atheism.  Isn't the issue survivability?

 

That depends on what you want. As Duchykins mentions, a society where cooperativity, support, and empathy form the backbone of behavior helps contribute to group prosperity. If someone wants prosperity as a natural preference, then it makes sense for them to follow in that model.

 

We've had this discussion already. "Oughtness" depends on the personal frame, and people tend to have similar frames because they come from the same evolutionary background.

[Duchykins]

My question was about Atheism, our topic.  Is greed good or bad or toxic?  Its natural and is it part of Social Darwinism?  Why should basic civility and respect for human dignity inform how we treat one another given Atheism.  Isn't the issue survivability?

 

 

The issue is not wholly about survivability.  It is also about making successful offspring.  

 

Again, greed is a trait, and no trait is universally advantageous or disadvantageous since such things are largely determined by the environment.  This has been said again and again and you never seem to be able to compute it and fix your erroneous view of evolution.  

 

Your social environment is part of your environment.  Greed can be more "bad" or more "good" and it depends on the context.  

 

Social Darwinism is chock full of celebrating greed and seeing it as a universal good, and that is one reason why it is scientifically unsound and immoral.  

 

You shouldn't even be talking to me about dignity as if you are in a morally superior position since you couldn't even face my many moral arguments and moral philosophy, like this one, which have long been part of my perspective and have been expressed by me in a multitude of ways. That link is only to the most recent expression of it.

 

 

You insist on foisting this absurd, disgusting construct of atheism on us, which is yours, or pieced together from some other atheist's, but certainly not ours.  

 

You don't even seem have the decency to let us speak for ourselves.  You don't allow us the dignity of actually taking in what we say about ourselves and listening to us.  You don't have to suddenly become an atheist in order to actually listen and acknowledge what we have to say about ourselves as individuals.  We aren't afforded even that small courtesy from you.  It is completely beneath you.  We are beneath you.

 

 

BUT 

 

Again, any time I say something that you find difficult to mock because it rings so strongly of truth and morality, you just ignore what I say as if I never said it at all.  And "forget" that I ever said anything of the kind.  It is in fact your silence in such times that exhibits your true humanity, your own conscience, not some religious construct that pretends to be your conscience.  It's an indicator of your own natural moral superiority over your religious beliefs.

 

 

I know that you are capable of better.  You have a family, you have friends, you love, and are loved in return.  You are capable of empathy all by yourself because you are a human being and this capacity is built into us.  You would probably not be so disrespectful to me if we were discussing this topic face-to-face where it is easier for you to see that I am a real person. 

 

I do not believe you are a mostly bad person.  I believe you are a mostly good person.  There is an inherent sense of fairness in you that can be appealed to.  That is exactly why I speak to you in the way that I do.  If I genuinely believed you were a lost cause or totally depraved then I would not waste my time and effort crafting replies like this.  

Edited by Duchykins, 03 August 2015 - 02:04 AM.

[shadowhawk]

Social Darwinism made tremendous impact on society and had its roots in Evolutionary thought no matter how applied.  That is just plain history.  Mutations and natural selection have been the classical engine of Evolutionary thought.  So are you saying Natural Selection is out?  What is the mechanism of selection.  How did Evolution Start?  I ask this not wanting to derail this topic.

[Duchykins]

No one is saying that SD had no parts to play in society.  Just no good ones.

 

Yes, mutation and selection drive evolution.  It's just that you follow the public's and the media's conception of selection instead of that of biologists.  What you know of "natural" selection is simply wrong.  And you don't even seem to be aware of the existence of sexual selection.

 

I don't know how evolution started.  That is a question that scientists working on abiogenesis or panspermia hypotheses are trying to answer.   I don't have this knowledge.

 

I also don't know if it's wise for me to spend more time trying to alter a little bit of the mis-knowledge of evolution that you are operating with at this point in time.  I don't have the energy to engage creationism right now.  

 

I can't even seem to talk you out of this monolithic evil image you have of atheism, that I am a bad person because I am an atheist.  Or that I am my own person and not some parrot for "new atheist" nonsense.  And those should be simpler tasks.

[Duchykins]

So you've said in a different thread that atheists have a problem with their basis of morality.

 

You believe we have a shaky foundation for building moral values, if we manage to have any at all.

 

It follows that it shouldn't be so difficult for you to address my moral judgments and philosophy directly.  

 

Instead I get deafening silence in the face of my moral proclamations.  From you, from Valor, other Christians.

 

Why?

[shadowhawk]

 

My question was about Atheism, our topic.  Is greed good or bad or toxic?  Its natural and is it part of Social Darwinism?  Why should basic civility and respect for human dignity inform how we treat one another given Atheism.  Isn't the issue survivability?

 

That depends on what you want. As Duchykins mentions, a society where cooperativity, support, and empathy form the backbone of behavior helps contribute to group prosperity. If someone wants prosperity as a natural preference, then it makes sense for them to follow in that model.

 

We've had this discussion already. "Oughtness" depends on the personal frame, and people tend to have similar frames because they come from the same evolutionary background.

 

 

Actually they don't and it depends on which period of history you are talking about
 

[shadowhawk]

So you've said in a different thread that atheists have a problem with their basis of morality.

 

You believe we have a shaky foundation for building moral values, if we manage to have any at all.

 

It follows that it shouldn't be so difficult for you to address my moral judgments and philosophy directly.  

 

Instead I get deafening silence in the face of my moral proclamations.  From you, from Valor, other Christians.

 

Why?

How did materialism give rise to ethics?

• evolution produces your moral sense and Hitler’s moral sense
• why do you think yours is better than Hitler’s, since both were produced by the same evolution?
• what makes right or wrong if evolutionary materialism is the source of morality?
• why is Stalin’s opinion of right and wrong less valuable than the herd’s opinion of right and wrong?
• do the Founding Fathers ground inalienable rights in a Creator, or in evolution?
• can atheism ground the existence of inalienable rights?
• can you ground objective moral values and objective moral duties by asking people how they feel?
• can you ground objective human rights on atheism by shouting like a madman and interrupting?
• how can you trust your thinking if they are the result of an unguided, random process of evolution?
• how can you have rational thoughts if materialism is true, and you are a machine made out of meat?
• can you ground objective moral values and objective moral duties on personal preferences?
• how do the personal preferences of some individuals create an objective moral duty for other individuals?
• does naturalistic evolution orient human beings toward survival or truth?  I asked this before.
• on materialism, what is the chemical composition of justice?

[Vardarac]

evolution produces your moral sense and Hitler’s moral sense

why do you think yours is better than Hitler’s, since both were produced by the same evolution?

 

Context. If a precept wasn't valuable to a given person, they would disagree in principle and practice. Hitler's sense of morality (if you could call it that) would be found disagreeable in practice to a person who finds compassion to be valuable. But why would two people disagree on moral ideas if they come from similar evolutionary backgrounds? The simple answer is that coming from a similar background doesn't guarantee that you're the same due to mutation and variation, though the probability and degree of similarity would increase if you share that background.

 

So, lumping several questions together...
 

what makes right or wrong if evolutionary materialism is the source of morality?

 

Materialism itself is not the source of my sense of morality. For me, this stems from the desire for peace and prosperity tempered with compassion, and this desire comes simply from who I am, molded by social conditioning. "Right" and "wrong", then, would be decisions that upset the balance of society or that implement it through actions not informed with compassion or empathy. The value of this idea is of course not objective, but I think many people have the same basic idea; they want society to work well without bloodshed, conflict, deceit, or abuse. That is what makes a tyrant's opinions on morality not valuable to them, and certainly not to the herd he would willingly toss to the fire in pursuit of what he sees as a worthy cause.

 

can atheism ground the existence of inalienable rights?

 

Atheism and materialism don't inform this basis; they're philosophical positions that have nothing whatever to do with what we identify as right or wrong. Inalienable rights are a concept we ground in popular empathy, the idea that people should be treated with basic, equal dignity under the law.

 

how can you trust your thinking if they are the result of an unguided, random process of evolution?

how can you have rational thoughts if materialism is true, and you are a machine made out of meat?

does naturalistic evolution orient human beings toward survival or truth?  I asked this before.

 

Survival (and almost certainly reproduction as the ability to select mates came about) requires some degree of successful evaluation of what is and is not true. There either is or is not a tiger behind the bush. This mate either has or has not the chops to survive a fight with a rival tribe. This fruit is or is not good to eat. The weather here is or is not changing enough to warrant relocating. For us to even exist as we do today requires at least some degree of rational thought. This is why the "evolution is brain fizz" camp needs to get a grip - the ability to make accurate enough decisions to survive and reproduce isn't a perfect understanding of reality, but it's good enough that we can at least be sure of P != Not P.

 

how do the personal preferences of some individuals create an objective moral duty for other individuals?

 

What gives us the right to impose the law on everyone? Nothing, really, though the reason you don't have people running in droves to change it is because they're unwilling or unable to.

Edited by Vardarac, 04 August 2015 - 11:01 PM.

[Duchykins]

Every single one of those questions or statements are loaded, except for two which I will answer because they were not assumptive.

 

1)

 

Survival or truth?

 

This is a little bit of both.  For example, if we fail to correctly interpret sensory information or analyze a situation and come to a true conclusion, we could end up injured, sick, killed, hungry, thirsty, fail to find shelter, miscarry a pregnancy, get young offspring killed, lose social status, or screw up a chance to procreate.  Or we could come to true conclusions and end up with the opposite results; avoid injury or death, find food, successfully hunt, find water, find shelter, gain status, raise successful offspring, etc.  This is not to imply that it is a perfect or even efficient system.

 

 

 

 

2)

 

Can inalienable rights be founded in atheism?

 

Atheism is not a philosophy with tenets or a belief system, it only answers the belief-in-god question, so the answer to your question is no.  However, you can find the promotion of inalienable rights in humanistic philosophy, or pulled equally from evolution and universal morality.

 

Inalienable rights means rights that cannot be given or taken away by another party; you are born with them, they are intrinsic properties of your being, they come from you.  Last time I checked, Christians claim we all have basic rights that are given to, endowed with, or bestowed upon people by another party (god) - those rights don't come from you.  So they're not really inalienable in Christianity.

 

 

 

Everything else you said assumes things about my position that do not exist, especially the ones that assume Social Darwinism or materialism which means that you, yet again, failed to exercise the courtesy of listening to the atheist you are actually talking to.    

 

I will not allow you to try to force me to defend positions that I disagree with.

Edited by Duchykins, 04 August 2015 - 11:04 PM.

[Duchykins]

Oh and yeah ... Christianity promotes moral relativism, not moral universalism.

[shadowhawk]

I am not trying to get you to assume anything  You are right to answer, "no." 

[Duchykins]

Of course I'm right, and that's not the first time you have acknowledged my wisdom and honesty.  I'm nearly always right.  

[shadowhawk]

 

evolution produces your moral sense and Hitler’s moral sense

why do you think yours is better than Hitler’s, since both were produced by the same evolution?

 

Context. If a precept wasn't valuable to a given person, they would disagree in principle and practice. Hitler's sense of morality (if you could call it that) would be found disagreeable in practice to a person who finds compassion to be valuable. But why would two people disagree on moral ideas if they come from similar evolutionary backgrounds? The simple answer is that coming from a similar background doesn't guarantee that you're the same due to mutation and variation, though the probability and degree of similarity would increase if you share that background.

 

So, lumping several questions together...

 

Would you agree that when we indiscriminately dropped bombs on women and Children, the innocent and guilty alike that this brought the war with Hitler to a halt and decided who was wrong or right? Survival, not truth was the deciding factor.  All the combatants evolved from the same materialistic stock.  Given atheism where materialism is the common source, why do we have ethical issues?
 

what makes right or wrong f evolutionary materialism is the source of morality?

 

Materialism itself is not the source of my sense of morality. For me, this stems from the desire for peace and prosperity tempered with compassion, and this desire comes simply from who I am, molded by social conditioning. "Right" and "wrong", then, would be decisions that upset the balance of society or that implement it through actions not informed with compassion or empathy. The value of this idea is of course not objective, but I think many people have the same basic idea; they want society to work well without bloodshed, conflict, deceit, or abuse. That is what makes a tyrant's opinions on morality not valuable to them, and certainly not to the herd he would willingly toss to the fire in pursuit of what he sees as a worthy cause.

 

Materialism given Atheism is the soujrce of everything.

 

can atheism ground the existence of inalienable rights?

 

Atheism and materialism don't inform this basis; they're philosophical positions that have nothing whatever to do with what we identify as right or wrong. Inalienable rights are a concept we ground in popular empathy, the idea that people should be treated with basic, equal dignity under the law.  I agree and that is why I said Atheistic materialism can't be the basis for ethics.

 

how can you trust your thinking if they are the result of an unguided, random process of evolution?

how can you have rational thoughts if materialism is true, and you are a machine made out of meat?

does naturalistic evolution orient human beings toward survival or truth?  I asked this before.

 

Survival (and almost certainly reproduction as the ability to select mates came about) requires some degree of successful evaluation of what is and is not true. There either is or is not a tiger behind the bush. This mate either has or has not the chops to survive a fight with a rival tribe. This fruit is or is not good to eat. The weather here is or is not changing enough to warrant relocating. For us to even exist as we do today requires at least some degree of rational thought. This is why the "evolution is brain fizz" camp needs to get a grip - the ability to make accurate enough decisions to survive and reproduce isn't a perfect understanding of reality, but it's good enough that we can at least be sure of P != Not P.

True for survival not truth.  As I said, survival is the issue not ethics or truth.  The strong survive. 

 

how do the personal preferences of some individuals create an objective moral duty for other individuals?

 

What gives us the right to impose the law on everyone? Nothing, really, though the reason you don't have people running in droves to change it is because they're unwilling or unable to.

Given materialistic Atheism. I agree.

 

[shadowhawk]

Of course I'm right, and that's not the first time you have acknowledged my wisdom and honesty.  I'm nearly always right.  

Yes, you cannot ground ethics in materialistic Atheism.  Can you?  "NO."  You are right!  Can I agree with you?

[shadowhawk]

“Can I explain the evidence ‘in the room’ (of the natural universe) by staying ‘in the room’?” This is a question I ask at every death scene to determine if I actually have a crime scene. When evidence in the room can’t be explained by staying in the room, I’ve got to consider the involvement of an intruder. If the evidence inside the universe can’t be explained by staying “inside” the natural realm of the universe, we must similarly consider the involvement of a cosmic intruder. One critical piece of the evidence in the universe is the existence of moral obligations. Can we expla? in these obligations by staying “inside the room”? Can naturalism account for the human dignity and value necessary to ground moral obligations?"  Wallace

[Vardarac]

You are equivocating. I have already said that materialism and atheism are not used as the basis for morality (as in, "x is right because there is no God") not that moral frameworks cannot exist within their paradigms (as in, "x is right, despite there being no God"), even though the bases for these frameworks will be on general agreements and opinions rather than one being's opinion. Moral obligations and the like arise from people imposing those on one another and on themselves, if they pretend to subscribe to a certain set of ethics.

 

Also, when you say "the strong survive", you're implying that strength is nothing more than brute force - It ignores how strength can be found in cooperativity and the application of empathy. Your view of how morality would emerge from evolution, unguided by a creator, is completely without nuance. Duchykins has already mentioned this, but you don't seem to grasp it.

[shadowhawk]

You are equivocating. I have already said that materialism and atheism are not used as the basis for morality (as in, "x is right because there is no God") not that moral frameworks cannot exist within their paradigms (as in, "x is right, despite there being no God"), even though the bases for these frameworks will be on general agreements and opinions rather than one being's opinion. Moral obligations and the like arise from people imposing those on one another and on themselves, if they pretend to subscribe to a certain set of ethics.

 

Also, when you say "the strong survive", you're implying that strength is nothing more than brute force - It ignores how strength can be found in cooperativity and the application of empathy. Your view of how morality would emerge from evolution, unguided by a creator, is completely without nuance. Duchykins has already mentioned this, but you don't seem to grasp it.

 

Hardly equivocating, I agree with you!!!  Are you now a theistic evolutionist saying God guides evolution?
 

[Duchykins]

 

Of course I'm right, and that's not the first time you have acknowledged my wisdom and honesty.  I'm nearly always right.  

Yes, you cannot ground ethics in materialistic Atheism.  Can you?  "NO."  You are right!  Can I agree with you?

 

 

I don't know what you think "materialistic atheism" is, but I bet it doesn't resemble my atheism.

“Can I explain the evidence ‘in the room’ (of the natural universe) by staying ‘in the room’?” This is a question I ask at every death scene to determine if I actually have a crime scene. When evidence in the room can’t be explained by staying in the room, I’ve got to consider the involvement of an intruder. If the evidence inside the universe can’t be explained by staying “inside” the natural realm of the universe, we must similarly consider the involvement of a cosmic intruder. One critical piece of the evidence in the universe is the existence of moral obligations. Can we expla? in these obligations by staying “inside the room”? Can naturalism account for the human dignity and value necessary to ground moral obligations?"  Wallace

 

What the actual fuck does this have to do with the discussion?

[Duchykins]

No, no, we're going about this all wrong.

 

First of all, ShadowHawk, you are a moral relativist.  This can effortlessly be demonstrated at any time by asking what's moral/immoral for humans to do and what's moral/immoral for your god to do.  

 

However you are the only one here spitting "relativism" out as if it were poison.  You additionally do not distinguish between relativism and nihilism.  

 

That's your problem.  If I didn't distinguish relativism from nihilism either, I would be sitting here calling you a moral nihilist instead.

 

You have no platform from which to launch an attack on my universalism, partly because you don't even seem to know what morality is from a philosophical standpoint (though you do know morality from an instinctive and evolutionary standpoint).

 

 

[Vardarac]

Hardly equivocating, I agree with you!!!  Are you now a theistic evolutionist saying God guides evolution?

Is English not your first language or something?

[shadowhawk]

 

 

Of course I'm right, and that's not the first time you have acknowledged my wisdom and honesty.  I'm nearly always right.  

Yes, you cannot ground ethics in materialistic Atheism.  Can you?  "NO."  You are right!  Can I agree with you?

 

 

I don't know what you think "materialistic atheism" is, but I bet it doesn't resemble my atheism.

“Can I explain the evidence ‘in the room’ (of the natural universe) by staying ‘in the room’?” This is a question I ask at every death scene to determine if I actually have a crime scene. When evidence in the room can’t be explained by staying in the room, I’ve got to consider the involvement of an intruder. If the evidence inside the universe can’t be explained by staying “inside” the natural realm of the universe, we must similarly consider the involvement of a cosmic intruder. One critical piece of the evidence in the universe is the existence of moral obligations. Can we expla? in these obligations by staying “inside the room”? Can naturalism account for the human dignity and value necessary to ground moral obligations?"  Wallace

 

What the actual fuck does this have to do with the discussion?

 

we were talking about ethics and morality.  Nothing jn the room of materialism can be the source for them

 

 

Hardly equivocating, I agree with you!!!  Are you now a theistic evolutionist saying God guides evolution?

Is English not your first language or something?

 

 

Dont you understand what you are saying?
 

[Duchykins]

SH you don't even know the difference between morality and ethics, between normative ethics and applied ethics, between relativism and universalism, between moral obligation and moral agency.

 

You keep insisting atheists cannot be moral by themselves.  You maintain that atheists cannot have a moral philosophy without your religion.  This is all you talk about.

 

Yet you want us to choose a moral path, which you think is Christianity.

 

We would have to use our existing morality to choose something moral.

 

Like almost everything else involving morality, you claim one thing, while practicing another.  Unawares.  That means you don't truly believe some of the things you think you do.