Why I changed my mind

[Totti (Luca)]

Thanks everyone. I have heard dennett speak about free will. But i think you cant just deny philosophy.

[John_Dalton]

@BoltzmannBrain

Well, if God is the entity which made the world and sustains it, a moral law created by him would be absolute, pretty much the same way that the laws of physics are absolute, you can’t break the laws of physics, and you can’t make torturing children ok for the same reason, basically. It would be just logically inconsistent with the nature of reality, without God (or another source of an absolute standard), there is no way that you can say that a moral code which allowed for that would be “actually wrong” and not “just different”.

I understand that, but my question was more about how we are supposed to know what the absolute moral directive is in any given situation.

@BoltzmannBrain

Yeah, but we have several animal species which live by rules which are way different from ours and they seem to be doing fine,

I don’t see how that’s relevant. The point is that we are an enormously successful species biologically speaking.

so I don’t see how developing our morals would be “inevitable” in some sense.

I didn’t say that it was. I don’t think anything about our evolution was inevitable.

@BoltzmannBrain

Maybe it was inevitable in order to reach our current level of development, but there is no law of nature telling that a species must necessarily reach it, we could be still living in the jungle and that would in no way by a logical impossibility.

Sure. So?

@BoltzmannBrain

I’m also rather skeptic that the short period of history in which we have been living in civilized “moral” societies was big enough to genetically select us for “empathic brains”, but I could be wrong on that, maybe someone here on biologos specialized in population genetics could write about it, I would be very interested to read it.

We’ve been evolving longer than that and have been developing the ability for cooperation for a long time, for which morality is needed. There are examples of empathy in the animal world, even. I believe I’ve read that mammalian empathy is related to the need for to care for young, and that evolutionary change can occur quite quickly. I’m also interested in hearing more and investigating this area.

@BoltzmannBrain

Well, he did specifically state that “When you are able to interpret pain in someone else, and can understand how your actions can cause pain in others, then that is the basis for morality.”. Maybe I misinterpreted it by accident, but it did sound a lot like he was conveying that being able to interpret pain in someone else and understanding how your action can affect them would make empathy “pop out”, like I suggested before, and I just don’t agree with that (for the reasons I outlied previously).

For my part, empathy is a feeder into that system and not an output. Empathy will cause such feelings, but not all people possess empathy in equal degrees, and some even seem to totally lack it (part of what is considered the disorder of psychopathy). I think this is an area where rationality does come into play. We are able to understand the effects of our actions. Because we can, we have a moral responsibility for them. That’s how I see it. Imagine a person with a severe mental disorder who lacks such understanding. Do we say “they are a person and they have an equivalent moral responsibility”, or do we recognize that their unfortunate lack of understanding means they lack moral agency?

[Relates (Roger A. Sawtelle)]

@gbrooks9

It’s ironic, and to some it doesn’t even seem possible. But Dennett is just what I needed … I’m 61. And his YouTube video changed 40 years of my opinions just last year !

I believe it His arguments expose the false nature of the atheist position by reducing it to absurdity.

The problem is that it does not demonstrate the positive role of philosophy.

[Relates (Roger A. Sawtelle)]

@John_Dalton

I don’t see how that’s relevant. The point is that we are an enormously successful species biologically speaking.

Generally speaking humans are a successful species because humans can think, meaning we can plan, communicate, discuss, learn from others and our mistakes, etc. If nature rewards thinking by making humans more evolutionarily successful, then that must be evidence that the universe is designed rationally, that is by God.

Also humans are a successful species because humans work together and cooperate, because they are moral beings. This has been disputed in the past, because of survival of the fittest, but Wilson has pretty well disproved that and the newest research I have seen indicated that successful humans do cooperate. If nature rewards cooperation and morality by making humans are evolutionarily successful, then this is further evidence that the universe is designed morally, that is by God.

[T_aquaticus]

@Relates

Yes, the New Atheists are more militant than the old atheists were. But I have noticed another difference. The New Atheism is based on Scientism, while the most prominent old atheist, Bertrand Russell was a prominent philosopher. Dawkins in The River Out of Eden rejects philosophy as does Hawking. Dennett began as a philosopher but seems to have left that calling long ago, although he seems to teach it.

Wouldn’t Scientism, as you have defined, be a philosophy? Isn’t Materialism a philosophy?