Well, I think you've really missed Kierkegaard's point. But I understand the misreading. Kierkegaard was actually on your side in some important respects. One was that he deplored the institutional Lutheran Church of his day even more than you excorate the Catholics. So you both despise institutionalized religion as inauthentic. Indeed, the three of us are all on board on that.Vitruvius wrote: ↑Fri Sep 24, 2021 5:33 pm (Regarding Kierkegaard) It's vile psychological manipulation: "Infinite resignation is the last stage before faith" - I was stressed and depressed enough at the time. What it led me to was deeper understanding of how religion exploits people at their most vulnerable: birth, death, marriage.
But I get why you don't understand his take on faith. In order to understand that Rubicon, you have to have crossed it.
That's not true. You're quite happy to misunderstand almost everything else I say. [/quote]Again, I ask you - how is it that philosophers have been seeking a definitive moral system applicable in all circumstances for thousands of years, and haven't managed to create one?Oh, that's a good question, but one with a very good answer. But before I respond, I think I'd better get clear exactly what you mean. And the best way to do that is to ask you how it is you've decided there's no "definitive moral system applicable in all circumstances." What observation, thought, idea or bit of history has convinced you that that is so?Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Sep 24, 2021 2:18 pmWell, because I don't yet understand the question. I hesitate to answer by missing your point completely.
I'm not happy to miss your point at all. That's why I'm asking for clarification. I'm surprised by your rather thin-skinned response to a genuine appeal for you simply to say what you are asking.
Well, if I didn't believe that, why would I be a Christian? So that's as surprising as an elephant in an alleyway.What you want to say is "Christianity is the definitive moral system - whether people know it or not!"
But that's not actually where I was going at the moment. Rather, I was pointing out the moral bankruptcy of a Godless universe...in company with people like Nietzsche, Hume and Dawkins, actually. And when you find a convinced Christian agreeing with three noteworthies of such opposite inclinations, you do well to ask yourself how that's possible.
And it's possible because, regardless of one's ideological preferences, it's the truth that all four of us can see right in front of us. I imagine that Nietzsche, Hume and Dawkins could have good reasons for wishing that secular worldviews could rationalize morality; after all, if they could, it would be one more reason to dispense with metaphysics altogether, wouldn't it? So they have reason to want to: but they can't. And to their credit, they're honest enough to say that.
Back to your argument, though. Thank you for finally explaining what you meant. Your summary was thus:
Why is it "not possible"?There's no definitive moral system because it's not possible,
... innate moral sense.
Well, if I may say, that's a terrible argument for your case. Because there is surely no "innate" impulse of comparable antiquity and duration to mankind's religious impulse. So if something being old and instinctive is reason to believe it's also true, then you'd have to give the same cachet to religion that you want to claim for morality.
But I have offered the contrary point: something being old and instinctive actually gives us no reason at all to believe it's true. There are things which are old and instinctive -- like, say, the impulse toward prostitution, or the instinct go to war on other human beings -- that we should all want to see gone. Those, too, are old, august and well-established among human beings.
I've explained that on the other thread, the one on transitions without parental consent. I'll refer you to that, if I may.I hate how you leave your argument in full, reduce mine to one line
There's a whole systematic argument to that effect, actually. And if one believes in any objectivity to morality, it's actually an extremely powerful and compelling one. But it starts with the assumption that morality exists, which, as I've pointed out, the Atheists tend to deny, if only to avoid the conclusion they don't want to be compelled to....a universe that allows for, even requires morality - is a moral universe, and one might argue, perhaps that implies the existence of God. I don't close the door on it. It's an interesting speculation, but no more than that.
Tilting? Tilting at windmills, perhaps?You're pitching at windmills in several senses here.
Second, you refuse to address the idea of the moral sense,
Actually, I've shown repeatedly why it is not a good argument. But you don't want to hear it. You can't call that "refusing to address." I could probably accuse you of simply "refusing to hear."
So I'm not understanding your REAL arguments, you say. And yet, when I ask you to clarify what are your real arguments, you accuse me of refusing to answer.In short, you're addressing the wrong question - because you think I'm a parrot.
That doesn't leave me many alternatives: I can jump to conclusions, and thus irritate you, or I can ask for clarification, and irritate you again.
5 million years is a lot shorter than current Evolutionary Theory claims, of course. But that's really irrelevant, because time is simply not the issue. Something being old doesn't make it right...or even more right...it just makes it old.Yes there is. It's just not a direct relation. Between is and ought - there's 5 million years of evolution in which morality proved an advantage to the individual within the tribe, and the tribe composed of such individuals.
Really?One commonly held implication of Hume's observation is that no list of facts necessitates a moral value. I agree. I accept that entirely.
Well, if so, you've just killed off any chance of you proving that any particular morality is more legitimate than any other, and, in fact, that any morality is in any way obligatory at all.
They don't, actually.However, when presented with a list of facts, people tend to draw the same moral conclusions.
What's interesting to me about that claim is that on the one hand, you tend to assume a kind of cultural Determinism for me, (that is, I can't be a free-thinking Christian, because my parents were Christian) but a moral universalism for others (that is, that all people end up with the same moral basics). That second one is empirically disprovable, by the way. But the first one actually undermines it as well; for if morality is merely the product of one's acculturation, then it's bound not to be universal at all.
That's because they're imbued with a moral sense. Hume was wrong.
Hume did not say people have no moral sense. He said that sense was not legitimizable on the basis of any facts. And you agreed with him about that.
What remains for both you and Hume to come to grips with is why human beings have ANY moral sense at all, since, according to a secular worldview, it's not legitimizable, and not universal, and not derivable on the basis of any facts.
Tie that to Evolutionism. Do a syllogism, to show your logic.Do you think it's right to murder? No? There you are then!
Premise 1: Evolutionism is true.
Premise 2:
Conclusion: Therefore, "Thou shalt not murder/steal/fornicate/etc. "(you pick it) is morally obligatory.
What's your connecting premise?
That's what agnosticim entails.I know I don't know if God exists or not.
And I prove to you that "social contract" is not that.I'm saying religion is a social contract
You're right...I'm not feeling it.I'm kicking your arse up and down; and if you're weren't so full yourself you'd see that.
Ah, there it is again: the cultural Determinism argument.Similarly, with all due respect, you're kidding yourself. Overwhelmingly, children adopt the faith of their parents
But you don't believe it. If you did, you wouldn't be arguing. Because it would be impossible for me, anyone else, or you to change opinions.
But empirically, people do that all the time. So you're just wrong about that, and aren't being consistent even with your own claim.
...is it not reasonable to suggest you got it from them?
To "suggest"? Sure: you can "suggest" anything, I guess. Since you don't know me, that would be a possible explanation, if not an automatic one. If you were merely "suggesting," I think you might be a bit more "agnostic" about that, and realize that you actually don't know. You don't, obviously.
What might speak to you is that I haven't based a single argument so far on tradition, my upbringing, or authority. I've given you reasons and evidence for everything I'm saying; and so whether or not I'm a helpless victim of domineering parents or an indoctrinated zombie has actually no impact on the argument at all.
I think you hover back to it because you actually suspect it's not true.
Then there's no way you should be plugging for Evolutionary legitimation of morality at this point. You've got nothing but the complete non-sequitur that goes, "Well, people THINK morality's a thing, so it must be."...if there's something that's true, I'll accept it no matter what.
How strong an argument that is, any genuinely open-minded person can probably see. Evolution has no warrant for morality, and belief in it is a mere factoid, a mere contingency that could as easily signal an error as a truth -- unless something much more than you've offered so far can be said in favour of it...
But I haven't heard it yet.