1. The goodness of God based on his basic nature.
Immanuel Can wrote:Yes, that's the typical way the Euthryphro Dilemma is presented. However, as I've suggested, the either-or it posits is what we call a "false dichotomy." A third alternative not considered by Plato is available: i.e. "both." God is both good and God.
You seem confused: that's not really an alternative: both of the options I listed already assume that God is both good and God. What I questioned through the two options is the *relationship* between goodness and God: which is contingent upon the other - is God's being/nature contingent upon goodness, or is goodness contingent upon God's nature/being? Working on these terms, I think that what you *might* be trying to say is: actually, there is a third option in which both are contingent upon one another.
Until speaking with a friend about this, I had been prepared to be charitable towards you, and describe this scenario as "mutual interdependence", but she convinced me that a better term for it is "circular". What is God's nature? Goodness? What is goodness? God's nature. You haven't told us anything about what goodness actually *is*, merely dropped it into a little merry-go-round. This is why, I think, you have not described an objective morality. How can that which is circular be described as "objective"?
Immanuel Can wrote:At first I was perplexed by your slowness to detect the category error involved, Harry...but then I read this...
Either way, we seem to lack an objective basis for morality on your view.
This made me puzzle over what you could mean by "objective." For all sides -- Theists and skeptics alike -- usually concede that *if* God exists, then morality is potentially "objective."
I will be a little bold and suggest that "all sides" are, as you seem to be, confused. Surely, "objective" connotes "non-arbitrary". Too, we must distinguish between morality-as-a-system-of-rules, and the justification(s) for that system of moral rules. If, as you seem to be arguing, goodness can only be defined circularly (as God's nature, which is good, which is God's nature, which is good, etc etc, round and round in circles), then we must admit that it is, in fact, arbitrary: there is nothing to ground it. Too, we might suggest that being based in God's nature, which is the "ground" of reality, the system of moral rules which God prescribes is "objective" in *some* sense (but in which sense, and is it meaningful? We could debate this too, but for now I won't go there), but this does nothing to *justify* those rules. All we have as justification is "They are justified because they come from the ground of reality", but why would we be satisfied with that as justification? Why would we accept that the ground of reality is moral in the first place? Is it moral simply because you define it to be? Surely there needs to be better justification for an "objective" moral system than mere definition!
Immanuel Can wrote:How could one get that level of confidence in morality, such that it would be an ontologically-stable item existing prior to any authority or agency capable of affirming it?
Oh boy, are you asking me to repeat myself *yet again*!? And after you have done nothing to disqualify my justification for objective morality other than to retort, "Well, it isn't self-evident to me". OK, but nor is it self-evident to a certain man's girlfriend why, travelling at 90 miles per hour, it would take an hour to travel 90 miles. Surely, there is nothing more self-evident than "We ought not to cause unnecessary suffering"? Why would you even think to deny that this is self-evident?
Immanuel Can wrote:I've never heard an Atheist, even one of the most fanatical stripe, suggest they have such ontological confidence; but hey, feel free to try to show how it's possible, if you think it is.
I have done so multiple times in this thread already. And I am not even an atheist.
Immanuel Can wrote:Then I began to wonder if what you mean by "objective" is something like "ontologically independent; not grounded in the character or existence of another being." That's how I could best make sense of your statement there. If I'm misreading your real implication then feel free to clear it up for me.
Like I said, we need to distinguish between the system of moral rules and the justification for that system of rules. I can see how a system of rules could be grounded in the character or existence of a being, but how might its *justification* be so grounded?
Immanuel Can wrote:But if I'm reading correctly, of course, to such a thing I would happily agree: there is no conception of objective "good" outside of the objective fact of the existence of God. But so what? Then the situation looks exactly as a Theist says it is.
The "so what" is that, in the absence of a (non-circular) justification for good, your concept of good is (because circular and thus ungrounded) arbitrary.
2. The question and nature of evil.
Immanuel Can wrote:Consequently, there is no "scalar" view: there are only those who have accepted the salvation that God provides, and those who continue to look to their own efforts to ingratiate themselves to the Creator. So the view is indeed binary -- there are the saved and the lost...no others.
OK, but we weren't quite talking about salvation, we were talking about *morality*. And *there*, you admit that:
Immanuel Can wrote:Oh, of course there are levels of evil.
So wouldn't this result in a scalar view after all? Presumably, there are levels of good as well as levels of evil - surely it would be morally better to die on a cross for strangers than to tip a waiter an extra dollar, for example. And if there are greater and lesser goods, and greater and lesser evils, then does this not suggest a "neutral" in between, where we have both the *least good whilst not being evil* as well as the *least evil whilst not being good* - exactly as I originally suggested?
3. Freedom.
Immanuel Can wrote:No doubt, the gift [of a countervailing good to make up for evil and suffering --HB] is costly, if it entails any period of suffering; yet who is to say it is not worth it?
Well, you haven't given me a good reason why the gift ought to be predicated on the existence of evil and suffering in the first place. And here we are going to be going around and around in circles, because I've put all of this to you before, but it seems to me that your argument is basically, "We need to be free to commit evil because freedom to commit evil is 'genuine' freedom". But why should anyone care for this freedom, other than because you've defined it to be "genuine"? This seems to me to be more like a marketing ploy than anything else: "Here, take some 'genuine' freedom - you might even get to go to hell with it! Isn't that a consoling thought?... What's that? What benefit do you get for the possibility of going to hell? Well... umm... well... you get the benefit that it's 'genuine' freedom - homespun, God-given, genuine, American freedom! Now ain't that something? GENUINE! The real deal! Hell's bells!".
Immanuel Can wrote:Be that as it may, I would suggest to you that probability calculus is for inert objects. It works somewhat well for scenarios like, "What are the chances (all things being equal, of course) that this boulder poised on a cliff-edge will be here in seven years," but very poorly for questions involving decision-making agents, like "What will be the hot stock for traders at this time next year" (in which nothing is ever "equal" in that sense). It requires a rather deterministic view of the situation to think probabilities can be invoked at all, in reference to human decisions.
Not so. Probabilities are, in fact, far more applicable to *non*-deterministic scenarios than to deterministic ones - just ask the quantum physicists. In principle, we can predict deterministic scenarios, such that the probability of a given event occurring (or not) is 1. The same is not true for non-deterministic scenarios - unless, of course, we are an omniscient God, in which case, don't try to lay bets against us.
In fact, libertarian free will *requires* that there is a non-zero probability of any decision going any way - otherwise, what genuine choice is there? Or would you disagree with that formulation? If so, why?
Immanuel Can wrote:But the chances of my being right about that are p(n-1), I suppose.
Oh dear. Is my disagreeability getting to you? Alas, I am sorry. But you did choose right from the start to focus on our points of disagreement rather than agreement, choosing only for our points of agreement to affirm, "Yay, Harry". I'm quite happy to return to our points of agreement and discuss those if you'd prefer to avoid the conflict.
James Markham wrote:Harry, so concerning the probability of any event, you would say given an infinite amount of time, I, or you, would get round to committing every atrocious act imaginable? So for instance, given an eternal period, I, or you, would eventually get round to forcing our amorous attentions on to our own mothers, fathers, dogs, even our own mothers dogs? This seems a bit much, surely there must be some way around such a conclusion, I would suggest that when dealing with a system that is subject to the laws of probability, then your mathematics may hold, but when dealing with a subject whose fate is determined by its own inclination, then your maths becomes redundant.
Well, it seems to me that we have two choices to avoid that conclusion (that we would get round to committing every atrocious act imaginable): (1) that the possibility of us performing those acts is zero in the first place, and (2) that human free will gives us the possibility to "beat the odds", as I suggested one might argue in an earlier post, and as you seem to be arguing above. But, in fact, (2) seems to me to reduce to (1): if our will is so strong that we can reliably, with a guarantee, "beat the odds" every time, then, effectively, the odds are zero (that our will might be defeated). Otherwise, as I suggested to IC above, libertarian free will would seem to require that there is a non-zero probability of us making *any* decision - for what else might we mean by having libertarian free will than that we are free (with some probability) to make any choice? And so, I would suggest that unless you could show that there is an absolute zero probability of us ever committing such an act, then, yes, over an infinity, we *would* get around to committing every atrocious act imaginable. An infinity never ends. There's a lot of time to make a lot of bad mistakes.
But here's the qualifier: I would also suggest that our choices do not occur in a vacuum. The circumstances in which we find ourselves greatly affect what we choose. So, potentially, we might be placed in circumstances which effectively reduce the probability of us making a bad choice to zero, or, on the other hand, into circumstances which greatly enhance the probability of us making a bad choice, effectively to one. Nevertheless, "effectively" is not 100%, and there is still room for error - unless, for whatever reason, we can determine that there simply is no chance of us making an error. But how would we determine that?
As far as your views on God go, they seem very similar to mine - that God's role is "the structuring of reality in a way most beneficial to the maintenance of sanity", and that God "is like a light that guides us to a more positive existence". I also believe that God is opposed by a counterpart whose role is the exact opposite - the structuring of reality in a way most conducive to *in*sanity, and a darkness that tries to subvert us into wickedness. You might or might not see eye to eye with me there too, who knows?