> The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.
Do you agree?
Do you agree?
So the first question is, do you live in such a universe? Is He there, or not? Not "would you prefer Him to exist, or not?" Not "Does your culture say He exists?" But does He actually exist? Is He really there?
If He exists, this is a very different universe than if He doesn't. And it would be wisdom to live in a manner that fits the universe you are in...
If one cannot falsify a god's existence then can it be proven to exist?
This could be why profoundly accomplished people sometimes become stupid. Their accomplishment convinces them that they are intellectually superior, at which point they proceed to stop thinking critically.
self-worship.
An atheistic wording could come from a moral perspective or appealing to virtuous characteristic.
A more scientific/ modern observation based re-wording of that is just the dunning kruger effect. (specifically the middle plateau of it)
That question seriously troubled me for some time. Ethics cannot be deduced from logic and aesthetics. To give an example, why exactly is rape wrong? Logically, evolutionary science lets us conclude that it increases individual fitness by increasing mating opportunities and group fitness by spreading alleles that are good at reproducing themselves. Judging by the popularity of the subject in fine art, aesthetics can't condemn it either. So what makes it wrong? Is it anything more than a bald assertion? On what basis and by whose authority? Is ethics merely the science of discerning whatever it is that the strongest secular power one is subject to will permit? I find that proposition philosophically unsatisfying.
Meanwhile, while there is plenty of room for elaboration, a theist can rest on the moral foundation that Mankind was created with inherent dignity in the image of the Creator and thus rape, murder, theft, and various other offenses against that dignity are objectively immoral, regardless of what whoever holds the local monopoly on violence thinks. Additionally, to aid those who may not be capable of drawing those inferences, the sacred scriptures literally spell out the most obvious dos and don'ts.
Rape is wrong, because it induces bodily and emotional harm. You can deduce your whole ethics and morals from the 'reduce the suffering you cause' view. You don't need religion for that.
Just because you personally think harming other persons is bad isn’t sufficient. What gives you the authority to impose that value on others?
What is insufficient about it?
That involuntary harm to one may occasionally benefit the many? Even if so can the aggressor and wider society know that ahead of time? And what about individual's right to freedom from harm?
> What gives you the authority to impose that value on others?
Society has to negotiate values together. The rule to avoid harming others is the least imposing value of all.
After 30y of "living by faith" I'm no longer a fan of trusting in authorities just because their rules are old or their existence is unfalsifiable.
Your opinion isn’t a valid ethical premise. It has no basis beyond your whims. Someone else might believe that it’s good and how would you refute them without claiming that your opinion is somehow more authoritative?
> Even if so can the aggressor and wider society know that ahead of time?
Obviously, in general, no. You can’t know that shooting a random person in cold blood wouldn’t prevent some greater evil. You can’t know that the child of that rape won’t cure cancer. The limitations of human reasoning are one of the reasons I’m convinced a correct ethics must have a superhuman author.
> The rule to avoid harming others is the least imposing value of all.
Once again this is begging the question. You’re trying to slip in the premise that minimal imposition is moral without any basis.
> After 30y of "living by faith" I'm no longer a fan of trusting in authorities just because their rules are old or their existence is unfalsifiable.
This betrays philosophical immaturity, which is of course fine. Most religious organizations do a very poor job with that aspect of formation, likely because those teaching are themselves philosophically immature. But this discussion isn’t about religion, faith, or your subjective experiences, it’s about whether the normative science of ethics can have any nontrivial conclusions without an objective foundation. If your anti-theism clouds your reasoning, feel free to instead pretend that we live in an advanced simulation and its authors defined human life as having inherent dignity. In that scenario ethics has a firm foundation. Now imagine the same scenario but without such a definition.
What is a more objective foundation than independently verified, experimental evidence?
> The limitations of human reasoning are one of the reasons I’m convinced a correct ethics must have a superhuman author.
So the apparent presence of this limitation is evidence of a higher power? How can you be sure that what you consider 'correct' ethics is objectively good?
This sounds like the classic is-ought problem. Experiment can, up to epistemological and ontological limits, only tell us about what is. It cannot tell us about what ought to be. If it appears to you that it can then you’re implicitly slipping in an additional ethical premise.
> So the apparent presence of this limitation is evidence of a higher power? How can you be sure that what you consider 'correct' ethics is objectively good?
I can’t. That’s one of the limitations of abductive reasoning. Unlike deduction it cannot reach absolutely certain conclusions. And if I could this entire thread would be moot. As for correct ethics, I accept Peirce’s view that ethics, like logic, is a normative science. Just as logic is defined to be the normative science of what is true or false, ethics is defined to be the normative science of what is good or bad. Hence my question about whether or not that science is trivial and admits whatever conclusions anyone says it does, or not.
Then there are no valid ethical premises, because all value propositions necessarily either are directly or rest upon subjective preference.
You haven't shown this, so you're just sneaking in the premise that ethics has no objective foundation, which is the very question under consideration. I could just as easily baldly assert "all value propositions necessarily either are directly or rest upon objective foundations," but I'm not because it would be philosophically uninteresting.
I accept that there are no valid ethical premises is a valid conclusion from the absence of an objective ethical authority. I can only abductively conclude the existence of such an authority because it appears to me that ethics is not in fact a degenerate science that can produce any result whatsoever.
Also are you arguing that the fact that people harmed others has happened that somehow means a world where this happened less often or not at all is a worse one? With that line of argument you are excusing any crime at all that ever happened, because by vrtue of the butterfly effect we have to assume every action ever taken created the world we live in and is somehow sacred that way.
Don’t just tell us there’s evidence, share it please. This is a site for satisfying intellectual curiosity.
> it improves in-group trust and collaboration
Merely improving in-group trust and collaboration doesn’t meet any kind of acceptable moral bar. Viking raiders had high in-group trust and collaborated extremely well, while raping and pillaging to their hearts’ content. Unless you accept raiding as moral, you’ll have to do better.
> Experiments also show that even 2 year old humans and a number of animal species have clear moral thinking.
This is a risible claim to anyone who has any significant experience with two year olds. It also contradicts your first sentence.
Edit: Three replies to a single comment inside half an hour conclusively indicates emotional rather than rational posting, especially since not a single one of my queries was responded to. One would think after all these years I'd be desensitized, but I never fail to be a little bit disappointed when I encounter someone who is incapable of dialectic, and, to make it worse, covers for it with puerile rhetoric. On the plus side, this does neatly illustrate the point of the submission.
Says who? Backed by what empirically true evidence? The Vikings had a strong moral code. That’s why they worked so efficiently as a group. They believe in justice and feared their gods. While raping and pillaging.
> Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity.
> The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.