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Cogito ergo sum

Here in the Philosophy forum we will talk about all the "why" questions. We'll have conversations about the way in which philosophy and theology and religion interact with each other. Metaphysics, ontology, origins, truth? They're all fair game so jump right in and have some fun! But remember...play nice!

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Atheism And Moral Progress

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  • Originally posted by seer View Post
    "
    Jim, they are talking about EVERYTHING. And are you suggesting that this "Cosmos" does not exist in space time? Then where does it exist? Sounds like God who lives outside of spacetime. You are almost there Jim...
    Yes, I'm suggesting that the Cosmos does not exist in space-time, but that space-times exists in the Cosmos.

    Comment


    • Originally posted by JimL View Post
      Yes, I'm suggesting that the Cosmos does not exist in space-time, but that space-times exists in the Cosmos.
      Ok so your Cosmos is eternal, and exists beyond space and time. Are there any more attributes you want to borrow from the Christian God?
      Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

      Comment


      • Originally posted by JimL View Post
        No one argues that pain is immoral, but to cause pain and suffering would be, and the ultimate cause of pain and suffering, if for the sake of argument we assume he exists, would be god.
        No, the purpose behind pain and suffering can be good, like a surgeon. Causing pain is not necessarily immoral.

        Blessings,
        Lee
        "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

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        • Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
          No, the purpose behind pain and suffering can be good, like a surgeon. Causing pain is not necessarily immoral.

          Blessings,
          Lee
          Right. As Plantinga talked about, a surgeon may have to remove my leg below the knee to save my life from gangrene, causing me a great deal of pain in the process. A psychopathic sadist may do the same thing, causing me the same amount of suffering, but for a different reason.

          Comment


          • Originally posted by seer View Post
            Jim, I don't believe in objective morality apart from God, but even with God I generally don't call his law objective, but universal and authoritative. My question to you; if objective morality exists what authority does it have over us? What happens if we violate it?
            I'm not sure how to answer that. If the objective laws of logic exist, what authority do they have over us if we violate them? I don't believe in divine retribution for every moral failing, if that's what you mean. If that were the case, there would never have been humans in existence.

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            • Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
              No, the purpose behind pain and suffering can be good, like a surgeon. Causing pain is not necessarily immoral.

              Blessings,
              Lee
              Thousands of people are suffering in the Bahamas right now. Is that good, and what is the cause, a moral intentional god, or an amoral unintentional nature?

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              • Originally posted by JimL View Post
                Thousands of people are suffering in the Bahamas right now. Is that good, and what is the cause, a moral intentional god, or an amoral unintentional nature?
                No, the suffering is not good. It may be like the amputated leg. It may be the necessary cost of a greater good. You can't just look at the suffering itself in isolation. You have to have more information.

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                • Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
                  No, the suffering is not good. It may be like the amputated leg. It may be the necessary cost of a greater good. You can't just look at the suffering itself in isolation. You have to have more information.
                  So you're saying that you believe god is the intentional cause of the suffering and death of the Bahama people?

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
                    I'm not sure how to answer that. If the objective laws of logic exist, what authority do they have over us if we violate them? I don't believe in divine retribution for every moral failing, if that's what you mean. If that were the case, there would never have been humans in existence.
                    No but there would be ultimate justice in the universe, we would be living in a just universe rather than an unjust cosmos. And the laws of logic have a pretty immediate effect, it is me or the bus occupying the same space at the same time. A Stalin can murder millions and live to a good old age. No real consequences.
                    Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by JimL View Post
                      So you're saying that you believe god is the intentional cause of the suffering and death of the Bahama people?
                      No, I don't believe that. I believe God set the world up as a free process for a greater good in order to support free creatures and that this world comes at a necessary cost: contingent processes clashing and sometimes bad things (natural evils) happening. It's not God's intention that they happen.

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by seer View Post
                        No but there would be ultimate justice in the universe, we would be living in a just universe rather than an unjust cosmos. And the laws of logic have a pretty immediate effect, it is me or the bus occupying the same space at the same time. A Stalin can murder millions and live to a good old age. No real consequences.
                        Usually there are real consequences. It's just that the time scales are different than they are for violations of logic or physics. That doesn't mean justice is guaranteed, but things bend toward justice. I believe in moral progress.

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by carpedm9587 View Post
                          I already responded to this post, but I had a thought as I awoke this morning. It focuses on the emphasized line above. As noted, this is incorrect because there it places on "language" what is more properly placed on "communication" in general. But you have a larger problem. How on earth do you get from "violates the implicit logic of language use" to "moral" or "immoral?" You seem to be suggesting that anything that violates the implicit purpose of a thing is acting immorally? How on earth do you make THAT leap? Doesn't that make the person who takes a brand new automobile and beats it with a hammer to create a work of art (yeah...believe it or not...Museum of Modern Art, Paris) immoral?
                          Kant's "Categorical Imperative" is, he wrote, a proposition that expresses an unconditional moral imperative binding in all circumstances and not dependent on a person's inclinations and purposes. He expressed it this way: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law." I don't accept Kant's version of it, because obviously our moral duties sometimes clash and we sometimes have to lexically order our duties. W.D. ROss came up with the idea of "Prima Facie Duties" which means that we have certain moral obligations but that they are not always absolutely binding in cases where they're superseded by other duties. So I may have to lie in order to prevent the Jewish family from being murdered. My lying doesn't mean, according to Ross, that my duty not to lie disappears, but that it is temporarily overridden by the greater duty to not let innocents be murdered.

                          We've already been over the distinction between 'communication' and 'language." Once again, lying is linguistic in nature; it is not endemic to communication generally. It's propositional in nature.

                          How I make the 'leap' is by Kant's Categorical Imperative. If everyone were to lie, it would unmake language, making language and discourse, and therefore morality and civilization themselves, impossible. It wold make the possibility of its own denial impossible. I could not will that lying could become a universal law. It would be an absurdity that would negate itself out of existence in short order. What makes anything immoral, such as in your system? Why does violating valuing/cherishing make something immoral? In this system, it's based in something that would literally undo itself, something real, beyond just feelings and opinions.

                          The artwork you mention is not an example of something violating its own intrinsic logic. In your example, the artist is merely using a hammer and destroying an automobile. S/he is not destroying the grounds of possibility for what s/he is doing. A crude analogy for what I'm talking about would be if artists started committing suicide en masse. If enough of them did it, there would be no more art or even the possibility of art.

                          Aside from the "prima facie" amendment, I think Kant's formulation can still be used. What would I be willing to do that I would be willing to make a universal law? What would I will that an Ideal Desirer would will, not that I personally or subjectively want? As imperfectly and incompletely as I can know these things, they are a way for me to potentially subject my willings to a public realm of discourse and beyond my own private desires and valuings.

                          Furthermore, the entire construct of your argument fails to account for the places where we perceive lying as perfectly acceptable or even a moral obligation. The Allies sent out multiple lies about their attack plans to confuse Nazi Germany before D-Day. The fiancee lies to their intended so as to surprise their intended with that wedding shower. People lied about the presence of slaves in their homes on the underground railroad. You take one example (i.e., the king decreeing everyone lies) and you seem to forget all of the other places where we lie with intent and with no moral conflict.
                          See above.

                          Now, you can work real hard to carve out all sorts of exceptions to your "implicit language" theory, but my approach far more elegantly deals with the issue. It is not about anything implicit to language. It is about valuing society/community. Society/community absolutely depend on trust to be functional. If we erode trust, we erode society/community. That is what is at work in the U.S. today, and what makes Trump such a dangerous individual. If you value society/community, you will recognize the importance of trust and see anything that erodes trust as an attack on society/community, and therefore immoral. Your moral framework will contain an "ought not lie" model, but tied to the valuing/cherishing of society/community. No exception is needed for the Allies, the fiance, or the stops along the underground railroad because those lies don't erode community - they protect something else that is valued: life - or happiness.

                          Now I have to run.
                          The problem with all of this of course is that it tells us nothing about the society/community I happen to be a part of. What if my society/community is Nazi Germany? It depends on trust. Sometimes trust NEEDS to be eroded. Sometimes trust is a dangerous toxic thing. I believe that trust in some things is bad. And life-- at what cost, and what kind of life? If you could be "happy" in Walden 2, would that be desirable? All of these things are complex and context-dependent. they don't yield to easy answers or to slogans. I recommend you take a look at the work of John Rawls, if you haven't already.

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by seer View Post
                            Tass, you may not agree that all this leads to God, but everything that was said about the fine tuning of constants was fact. That is not selective. Do what you will with it. You may have the last word.
                            No, it is NOT fact. You assume that the universe was “fine-tuned” to allow for life as we know it, the implication being that ‘god-did-it’ for this very purpose just for us.

                            However, the vast majority of the universe is hostile to any life. A minuscule fraction allows for life-forms to evolve, our planet being an example…even though 99% of evolved life on Earth has now become extinct.

                            And it is predicted by science that a tiny minority of other planets or moons in the universe may also harbor life. But it would probably be life that is utterly alien to us…possibly more intelligent in some instances. E.g. scientists have hypothesized that life has developed in the liquid methane and ethane that forms rivers and lakes on Saturn’s moon Titan, just as organisms on Earth evolved in water. And similar may well apply to other solar systems in our galaxy or any other of the billions of other galaxies in the universe.

                            But overall the universe is NOT fine-tuned for life, quite the reverse.
                            “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
                              No, I don't believe that. I believe God set the world up as a free process for a greater good in order to support free creatures and that this world comes at a necessary cost: contingent processes clashing and sometimes bad things (natural evils) happening. It's not God's intention that they happen.
                              So, you think heaven will be such a free process for the greater good as well?

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
                                Usually there are real consequences. It's just that the time scales are different than they are for violations of logic or physics. That doesn't mean justice is guaranteed, but things bend toward justice. I believe in moral progress.
                                Jim, if there is no ultimate justice, or universal reckoning if you will, why would it be rational to deny your selfish desires or wishes?
                                Last edited by seer; 09-09-2019, 07:28 AM.
                                Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

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