Then you dont know the biological definition of altruism. Which is what Dawkins is trying to address… anyways I’ll let you read his essay and am curious what you think!
Thanks
K
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I’m also curious to read it.
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I meant that I didn’t disagree with the substance of what you were saying: you invent your own meaning.
I don’t think you are actually delusional. I think your worldview is inconsistent. As I said, meaning or telos is an objective part of the world so we can find (not invent it) it. If meaning didn’t exist in the world no one could find it. Imagine we were playing a form of hide and go seek and I invented some fictional object in my head and said go find it. You would never be able to. You can only find things that objectively exist. Just as I have said morality is tied into the objective nature of what it means to be human, we can find it. Isn’t the entire discussion about whether we invent (subjective) or find (objective) morality? In the end, we are all drinking from the same objective well in my view, I just see you as using a very leaky bucket. I think you tap into objective human nature when you form a moral system, you just don’t know it.
Vinnie
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What did you ask God for, if you don’t mind me asking?
Unless you can produce a reason why children get cancer, which I doubt, that is effectively[1] the universe you are in.
But not exactly, because in this universe Jimmy Savile only lived to eighty-four. ↩︎
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A response.
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You are inventing that claim.
Baloney. Humans are more than capable of inventing meaning that is not intrinsic to the universe.
That comes close to a description of religion.
Then it’s strange that you can never demonstrate it.
It would be my contention that this is exactly the system we are all using. You chose Christianity as something to give meaning to your life. Your vision of how you want the world to be is something you choose based on your own internal judgments, even if they are informed by religious belief.
I just find this flabbergasting. Perhaps I have completely misjudged human nature, but in my own experience I have a very strong sense of morality to where I naturally care about other people. I don’t need a religion to tell me to care about other people, and I can’t understand why other people would need a religion to do this. If it is actually true that people are completely uncaring and need something to compel them to treat others kindly, then the world is very different to how I think it is.
There are nations where religious belief is very low, such as in Denmark or other Scandinavian regions. People seem to treat each other very kindly. People seem quite happy in these countries.
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Yeah nope. Not really, no. 14% young Europeans at risk of depression, Sweden tops the list: Study | Euronews
Quote
“Eurofound is the EU Agency for the improvement of living and working conditions.
According to the study, Sweden (41%) tops the list of youngsters “at-risk of depression” based on WHO guidelines, followed by Estonia (27%) and Malta.
At the overall EU level, 14% of young adults are at the risk of depression. Four percent of people between the ages of 15 and 24 years are already suffering from chronic depression.”
And Why Are Swedes So Depressed? - Scandinavia Facts
I don’t have time now to answer to the rest but i will.
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No, you have invented the notion that only material and efficient causes are real. This is just uncritical, enlightenment driftwood. This is not some universal default position. You have to demonstrate that. I have given you several examples of what I mean (e.g. heart, eye, etc and then extended things to human nature and so on). We are about 100 response into an argument and it seems to me that just now you have gotten around to commenting on what I have repeatedly said was the basis of objective morality. This is aimless babble. I have shown you a completely objective moral system.
Yes, exactly what I said. You invent, you don’t find. You make it up. Inventing is not the same as finding. You cant find things that don’t exist. Those are inventions. And I seek truth, not falsehoods that comfort me. Your worldview makes for an excellent blind faith.
Incredulity is not an argument. We base our morality on objective human nature. That is like asking me why we wouldn’t base mathematics or science on emotion. Our wants as individual humans do not always correspond to what is moral. Try again.
Which is exactly what your invented subjective moral system is. A delusion to help you cope with the fact that humans are moral but your worldview precludes genuine morality.
I have already shown repeatedly with a number of examples when you identify the telos of something, you know its ends or purpose. You deny telos. I deny your your made up moral system for the fiction that it is. You define good as that which agrees with you. That is not a rational position to adopt.
If God was known to not exist, I would not believe in God. I would not make up a God to comfort me. That is how your ethical system works. And I certainly wouldn’t claim a knowingly made up deity is how every other God in the whole universe should work. I also wouldn’t assert that every invented religion was only capable of progress if it became like mine (this is exactly what you have articulated and have agreed with when called out on it).
The truth is, @T_aquaticus, you are actually far more “religious” than me.
Vinnie
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“Down goes Frazier!!!” “Down goes Frazier!!!” Cit.
This is exactly what I said to a friend of mine who told me he would never accept the existence of souls, no matter what evidence was presented — NDEs, terminal lucidity, the countless reports of people seeing deceased individuals without knowing they had died (only to later discover it was true), the hard problem of consciousness, spiritual experiences, and I could probably go on and on.
For him, the nonexistence of souls is simply “axiomatic” (these are his own words), and nothing would convince him otherwise.
If that isn’t an example of religiosity—of the fundamentalist variety, no less—then I don’t know what is.
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- On July 17, 2017, I officiated at the wedding of my wife’s niece and her fiancé. Immediately before their vows, I raised their “wedding rings” and said: “Metal dug from the earth, melted and refined in fire, and crafted into two objects that, until now, have had no meaning.
O__, S___, take these rings and give them meaning.”
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I would say Dawkins with his “The Selfish Gene” has considerable investment in the connection between evolution and selfishness, and by his own reasoning he cannot be considered objective on the subject. It is a living example of his own thesis, where selfishness constrains him to see evolution as fundamentally selfish.
But I have never agreed with his basic thesis. On contrary, I see evolution founded on an absolutely essential two stage process each based on one of these two principles, competition and cooperation. Competition is the principle for individual evolution and cooperation is the principle for communal evolution. Frankly evolution without the latter is both lame and ineffectual to the extreme going nowhere.
As a result, I must reject the thesis that morality and altruism requires God and religion, and Dawkins’ challenge to atheists is one I easily accomplished myself as a youngster without any belief in God or religion (aside from psychology).
As for whether humanity is fundamentally competitive/amoral or cooperative/moral, that is a more complicated question and frankly the Christian viewpoint tends greatly more to the former than the latter. Not only is there the fall where we see murderous selfishness spreading in mankind, but after the flood I think we see even God endorsing competition in the story of Babel. This is one case where I see the presence of sin changing the rules because we are talking about human behavior rather than the natural world.
And I see it as just another example of the same kind self interested bias as Dawkins’. He has connected morality with Christianity and thus makes no effort to see any basis for morality without it.
Well what about me? I am a Christian so where is my bias. LOL Well for that I think you have to look at my reasons for belief which doesn’t include this absurd morality dependence argument. I have no pretense to objectivity only and I have plenty of bias on many topics – this just doesn’t happen to be one of them.
While my first inclination was to enthusiastically agree, I also had reasons to be skeptical. I saw these countries as used as support for many things like socialism. But even a little check on this reveals the hilarity of the argument. Church membership has indeed be falling in Scandanavia… why it has dropped to Church of Sweden (53.2% in 2021) and the Church of Norway (61.7% in 2024) and Denmark 70%. LOL LOL …well actual participation in services has been dropping with attendance in all of these only 10% of membership. But I cannot see that attendance is such a great measure of things like reasons for morality (I wasn’t attending for decades myself). Sorry… I just don’t see a great argument here.
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I think some-one once said that philosophy and theology are like searching for a black cat in an unlit coal cellar; they differ only in whether the cat is present.
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Thank you for strengthening my position. The rings themselves had no special meaning to those two people until it was invented. Of course, invented meaning can be important to a person. But I note in this discussion about subjective morality: the couple could have held up the rings and said “these rings symbolize our intention to rob banks” instead saying “these rings symbolize our love, marriage and commitment to one another.” These rings can have profound meaning in the eyes of their owners and family because love and meaning are objective parts of the world. You can’t acquire something that isn’t an objective part of the world anymore than you can find the fountain of youth. Cliffs: the rings are symbols pointing to reality, they are not creating reality.
Vinnie
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I think the meaning behind my statements have been greatly misunderstood so I apologize for that and hope to clarify my points further:
A) If I look back and try to discern why I made a reply, it was to show a perspective that wasn’t either a non-theist using subjective authority for their morality in a godless world or someone who totally disregarded all morality for self interest and preservation. My perspective is that I wanted a 3rd perspective to be noted in the discussion, saying that outside using subjective morality with an authority derived from God or totally be as immoral as possible, one could just alternatively refuse to participate in society or end their life early
B) My perspective was not to indict anyone else but simply describe my personal conviction of what I would do in that situation. I was not prescribing judgment on any others positions in this matter, but I could understand why it could be seen as indictment.
C) The reason why I said I would not find any compelling reason to be moral or not self-interested is not due to me seeing the value in different authorities not rooted in God. I’m glad we have local laws that keep people safe and a flawed yet helpful justice system that typically has decent authority on morality within a society. I even previously admitted that my subjective interpretation of a objective morality from God is reinforced from nature, science, and other empirical research. So why would I say I have no compelling reason to be moral? Because my whole point was I am ( even to this day I’m firm in this belief) convinced that if I believed that God was non existent or dead or whatever, I would compelled to end my life early. (See above why I wanted to make that distinction). The conviction I would have to end my life early is greater than me being convicted or compelled to stay in society under subjective morality. But it’s not because I find no meaning or value in subjective morality, it’s simply because the pull to non-existence has been a constant battle in my life (to say in a round about way) and without sufficent reasons for resistance, I can’t really avoid that outcome.
D) The chicken or egg problem: One thing that can not be determined in our lifetimes is whether the morality that comes “naturally” to us has an ultimate origin in God or not. God as the First Cause, Prime Mover, pantheistic, and panentheistic ideas of God would all conclude that your subjective morality is rooted in God. So for me, I am perfectly okay with any non theist saying that they came to a natural subjective morality without any help of religion. If humanity had to wait 200k or 194k years for God or God-man to give us that morality, I couldn’t get behind that religion. But I believe in a God who would allow all people to be moral creatures without his direct intervention, then I could certainly get down with that. (Im absolutely not in the total depravity crowd). So me having the Christian story to give me that why ground my understanding of why a lot of morality is intuitive. If we say that morality is part of our evolution, then certainly God can use natural process to embed “morality” into creatures. I apologize for any person I might have offended if I suggest that one could only be moral with God. If God is grounding of all reality, then you T. Aquaticus and all other non religious people are and certainly have the capacity to be moral creatures without that grounding story. If would seem strange to me if God gave humanity limited access to that sense of “right and wrong” , despite our checkered past showing how difficult that is.
If you want any more clarification, feel free to respond or DM.
-Liam
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Not at all, if what you take is the principles, because while circumstances have changed humans have not.
That was one of my critiques of Plato’s Republic in a philosophy course. I contended that there is no such thing as a “noble lie”.
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I didn’t. More than a small amount of the time I don’t like the meaning it gives to my life! I choose it because the evidence is strong enough to say, “This is true”.
Western society needed a religion to say that – it’s where the western ideas of compassion and freedom and such come from. You’re just an heir of a Christian worldview stripped of actual Christianity.
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I know very well that there is meaning and purpose in life without God but I lost my faith in physicalism’s ability to make sense of my experience of the world. The measurable attributes of the world I experience it captured very well but I find no place in it for my direct experience of beauty or the meaning I find in many stories, songs and verses. By the neutral POV of science, all of that just comes off as intrinsically unmeaningful diversions to placate us as we await the end whether our own or the heat death of everything.
I have to stick up for the actual value of those experiences which convey meaning directly but can never be measured or proven. I find the specificity of Christian belief off putting and its claim to exclusivity offensive. But I know its mythos is shot full of truth which cannot be conveyed plainly. As a result I no longer believe in the adequacy of atheism/secularism to replace traditional belief. On the other hand the proof of every pudding is in the tasting and I don’t assume we’ve been sampling all the same ones.
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Did you think that people who say “God speaks to them” actually hear God’s voice?
They don’t. It’s mostly lies, social pressure and self delusion. That part is no different then those other religions.
If you want to hear God’s voice you read the bible, and then you see what happens in your life and have the wisdom to understand “random” doesn’t exist, only providence.
Because in every second God himself is rendering everything you’re seeing with your eyes right now. If he stopped, it all goes dark. Quantum mechanics revealed that the universe has a “back end”. That’s the only rational explanation. Saying “I don’t know what it means” is willful ignorance.
And the Holy Spirit isn’t a spiritual possession or a imaginary friend. You don’t feel it. You only see alignment with the will of God in your life, the “fruit” of the Spirit. Christ in you. It can be very dramatic though: forgiveness, peace, restored relationships. If you believed before, you still have him with you, waiting for you.
To all this you may say something like “most Christians would disagree/ argue with you”. But spare me. All that is required is to believe in Jesus. But mysticism is delusion. God is not a fairy tale, he is more real than the universe itself. It has its being in him.
I ask if you to consider if you had understood all of this before, what would you have done?