Vitruvius wrote: ↑Sun Sep 26, 2021 2:00 pm
Objective moral value is a canard.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Sep 26, 2021 10:34 pmHmmm...
I'm not sure what you mean by a "canard." You'd maybe want to check the definition on that.
I know what it means. Perhaps you might want to check the definition.
Well, ordinarily it implies some sort of slander or insult, something which indicts the personality of somebody or denigrates something. And I can't see that mentioning "objective value" insults anybody.
Evolution grounds no particular moral value.
Now we agree. Evolutionism implies that reality is amoral, and people's moral sense is misleading. There are no such properties as it imagines in the universe, then.
Demanding it should is the canard.
I didn't "demand that it should." That would be unreasonable, since, as I've said, it simply
cannot.
I just pointed that fact out.
Vitruvius wrote: ↑Sun Sep 26, 2021 11:50 pm
So you think objective moral values are possible? Please explain.
Definitely.
I believe that the moral sense, as fallible as it is, does not refer to
nothing. But as I said before, the fact that people have that sense doesn't even remotely imply that we can decide that sense is accurate. They could be completely mistaken, of course, merely imagining ogres under the bed, so to speak, or trying to shake off the historical shackles of their mental confusion. So we can rest nothing much on such an observation.
What we can rest on is this: IF (and I offer this at the moment only as a hypothetical; I'm asking you only to consider the implications IF it's true, not to agree THAT it's true, okay?), IF it's true that there's a God, then this world was not created without purpose and direction. The Supreme Being had an intention in creating what He created. Some things were created for one purpose, and some for another. And if a creature actualizes the function and purpose for which it was created, or if a creature is helped to do so, then that is moral. IF, on the other hand, a creature is suffered to depart from its intended function, or if it is used in a way not intended by the Creator for it, then that is immoral.
But human beings are the only creatures on the earth endowed not merely with an intuition about good and bad, but with the self-awareness necessary to recognize that they are moral agents, to reflect and theorize about their moral standing, to consider the consequences and ramifications of their actions in light of the moral, and to be responsible to the Creator for what they do or fail to do. Lower animals, from the complex to the single-celled, or trees or the environment itself have no such self-awareness, no such reflective moral capacity. They have reactions, instincts, and some even have emotions...but the awareness of themselves as moral entieties, they do not have. They simply run according to program, so to speak.
And there is a further way in which ethics are unique to human beings. God does not speak to dolphins and chimps -- or if He does, they're remarkably reticent about it. But we have the hypothesis that God speaks to man, revealing what HIs specific purposes and intentions in Creation are. Now, you might say, "I don't believe that God has done that." Fine and dandy: but I should say again that we are speaking only in hypotheticals right now, only in IFs. And IF God exists, there seems no reason at all why the Creator IF He should choose to do so, couldn't reveal His will and intentions to people. We humans communicate all the time -- including sharing our moral views. There is no
prima facie reason to suppose God should be incapable of the same, surely.
morality is a sense - like humour or aesthetics...That's what we are working with! Unless of course you've been keeping your secret recipe for objective moral values under your hat all this time?
If that's what we're working with, then we have nothing. The child's fear of monsters is irrational. The sooner he grows out of it, the better for him. If morality is the same, then Nietzsche was right.
Robinson Crusoe cannot sin. Alone on a desert island, nothing he might possibly do would be immoral - because morality is an intersubjective sense,
Well, he couldn't if He were
alone, as you say. But have you read that book? I have.
Robinson Crusoe discovers, in his isolation from other human beings, that
he is still responsible to God. All alone, no longer with civilization's excuses and distractions, he realizes he has been living without acknowledging his moral duties before God. He experiences a conversion, and becomes a Christian.
But you're onto something. IF (speaking hypothetically again) IF there were no God, and you or I was the only entity in the universe, then we would have no moral duties at all. Whatever you wanted to do or be, you could. To whom could you owe anything?
However, the situation isn't made better if there were two of us, or three or a billion, if there's no God. For the existence of these other creatures is purely accidental. You still owe them nothing, if God does not exist. And if they claim you owe them something, they're just trying to fool you. You needn't care. If you have the power and the will, as Nietzsche said, you are the one who can do what you want to whomever you want, and compunctions be damned...they're all an illusion anyway.
He won't pass on his genetic material.
Are you suggesting creatures have some kind of moral duty to "pass on their genetic material"? From whence comes any such duty?
Evolutionism means nobody has a duty to anything. The human Race is a race of cosmic orphans: they have no "father," no purpose for existing, and no teleological direction. They happened to explode into existence with the Big Bang. They were an accident of what followed...chance, time and unguided processes -- without purpose, without reasons, without value. Human beings are neither more nor less significant than a tree or a rock...and like all animals, they are plausibly doomed to exinction...if not now, when they wipe themselves out by environmental destruction or plagues...and if not then, the they are doomed when the Sun decays or when the universe itself settles into eternal Heat Death. But it's inevitable...and devoid of any moral implications...IF there is no God.
That's the reality. And if the secularist is unwiling to face it, that unwillingness will protect him from nothing. He's a dying animal, spinning out of control on a dying planet. And that's the end of it.