The Moral Argument

[LuftWaffle]

Well, I can't say for sure if you're feigning ignorance here, but I believe it was quite clear that my original argument was that "we follow the Golden Rule because it allows us to exist and function as a society."

Here's what you wrote:

"The Golden Rule is grounded in neuroscience and evolutionary biology in order to reject destructive elements of a herd when species learned to band together in groups for increased survival chances, and food and mating opportunities. When combined with altruism under certain situations, it can potentially improve the fitness of the group or species as a whole at the expense of a few individuals. We follow the Golden Rule because it allows us to exist and function as a society. A number of other animal species do the same;"

I've attempted to summarise the key terms which are, "increased survival chances", "improve fitness of the group or species", "exist and function as a society" as human flourishing.

You have also said, "A large subset of morals that are generally agreed upon across the world can be termed as "objective" because they stem from a single source: the Golden Rule."

I merely attempted to sum up all these points in terms of morally right essentially meaning "that which improves human flourishing". To be honest I don't see how that equates to me feigning ignorance?

It seems then that the claim you're making is that human beings intrinsically *know* what the goal of evolution is, and that our moral judgements are essentially based on this intrinsic knowledge, is that correct?

There may plenty of actions suggested by the woefully near-sighted that may yield some benefits in the short term, but will ultimately cause the collapse of society.

The problem is that you can dismiss any objection as "near sighted", but how is that falsifiable? Aren't you simply assuming that it's near sighted?

Another problem is the "IS" versus "OUGHT" distinction. Moral values and duties are non-natural prescriptive properties. How do you get to these properties from the brute facts of nature?

The distinction is mostly a man-made one. Humans are the only species who have evolved enough intellectual capacity and self-awareness to question and ponder what we do. In the early ages where science was lacking, the easy answer to that question was that we were created as an inherently superior species and endowed with morality by an omnipotent, omniscient being (who also happened to be the convenient explanation for everything else). With the progression of neurobiology, we can now trace morality back down its evolutionary roots and observe how other species exhibit "morality" as well, not just humans.

Apart from making claims you haven't actually demonstrated anything, though. How do we know the distinction is mostly man-made? Why would that make it invalid? How do we know that our intellectual capacity and self-awareness has evolved?

The problem is that if our morality is evolved then it cannot be prescriptive. Why should a person follow any moral standard? Because that's how we evolved? Why does a person OUGHT to behave according to how they evolved? If a psychopath behaves according to his evolved morality, why do we say their apathy and selfishness is wrong?

Note that I encased morality in quotes. I was not attempting to provide a definition. I was merely pointing out that the a partial subset of behaviors typically known to humans as morality is hardly exclusive to humans, and has its roots in evolutionary biology. Animals are not moral in the strictest sense of the world because morality is a man-made concept that has evolved to include not only the foundation of the Golden Rule, but culture, higher emotions, and various other factors as well. But actions that would be considered "moral" if performed by humans are also performed by numerous other species as well, especially highly social ones.

....and there are actions exhibited by animals that would be considered "immoral". On what standard do you select which animal behaviors we should emulate?

This again raises the problem of flexibility within the evolutionary paradigm as Philip Skell put it, "Further, Darwinian explanations for such things are often too supple: Natural selection makes humans self-centered and aggressive—except when it makes them altruistic and peaceable. Or natural selection produces virile men who eagerly spread their seed—except when it prefers men who are faithful protectors and providers. When an explanation is so supple that it can explain any behavior, it is difficult to test it experimentally, much less use it as a catalyst for scientific discovery."

If humans behaved utterly selfishly and cold, you'd do exactly what you're doing now. Plugging "neuro biology" in to fill the gaps.

I proposed the possibility, not stated it as a fact. The thing is, the vast majority of theological arguments are based on premises founded on arguments from ignorance, and the premises for this moral argument are no different; by pleading that there is no other possible source of objective morality other than from God, it establishes the conclusion that God must exist. Now, this premise cannot be falsified because it isn't based on evidence in the first place, but it can be called into question by showing that there is, in fact, another possible source of objective morals, and this source does not require a supernatural explanation.

This is simply false. If seems you're suggesting that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe in God, so we're just inserting God as an explanation to these gaps in our understanding. The exact opposite is true, as PGA also pointed out, there are numerous deductive reasons for believing in God forming a strong cumulative case. These are philosophically sound arguments, not mere arguments from ignorance.

On the other hand it is actually the materialist who is seeking to fill the gaps with materialism, by simply imagining ways that these gaps can be filled.

I have not seen a single shred of hard evidence that a level 2 or greater multiverse exists, but this is posited to provide the probabilistic resources to answer the teleological argument.

I have not seen a single shred of hard evidence suggesting the non-uniformity of cause and effect, but this is posited to answer the cosmological argument.

I have not seen a single shred of hard evidence suggesting that the Copernican principle is valid, but this is simply assumed to answer to the vast body of evidence that planet earth appears to be unique.

I have not seen a single shred of hard evidence that precambrian life was soft bodied, this is simply assumed to explain the precambrian explosion, and thus the lack of progression up to those species.

I have not seen a single shred of hard evidence that "OUGHT" is a dummy term or simply a manmade construct apart from the assurance by materialists that such is the case.

If falsifiability is important to you, then how would you falsify "survival of the fittest"?

[Exaeus]

Hi Exaeus,

We are standard bearers of the light of God in the face of Christ. We are human just like you, but our guidance comes from outside ourselves. The Bible claims to be a revelation of/from God. You either take God at His word, acknowledge Him as' such and our highest authority, or you displace that authority with the likes of relative human minds. Even though 2 Timothy 2:15 was written to a specific person, it also applies to all Christians in as much as "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16)

The point is that there is a correct way of handling the word of truth.

Hi PGA,

Unfortunately I do not see using Biblical claims to verify the Bible as being useful. I hope the reason for that is obvious.

I am aware that the common theist rebuttal to that argument is that non-theists are in a similar boat by using logic in order to verify logic. The difference is that logic is based on premises and observations that can be directly verified to be true. If what we can observe and detect are all false, then there cannot possibly be meaning whatsoever to be found in any worldview - including the Christian one .

I discussed the problem of coming up with an objective morality when all we have is our little old subjective selves. Who decides? Now you have come along with the wisdom that we are all missing and are claiming that The Golden Rule predates the Christian God of whom you class as hypothetical.

The strange thing about objective Christian morals is that they're hardly objective at all. The castigation of homosexuals and pornography, for instance, is hardly universal, much less objective. Christians can claim to possess an objective set of morals; what they have been unable to do, however, is to prove it. In fact, the tenets of Christian moral law that are alleged to be objective actually precede Christianity and the Christian concept of God by far. It is the Christians (and, to be fair, quite a few other religions as well) who have taken the age-old Golden Rule and tossed in a bunch of extra, subjective morals around it, and are now attempting to sell the new package as The original set of objective moral laws.

Now I would claim that man is inherently religious because since the Fall he has lost his way and is trying to reconstruct the true image of God he has lost to conform to his own likeness. If you will notice in the book of Genesis the phrase "This is the account..." (Genesis 2:4; 6:9;10:1;11:10, 27) or "This is the written account..." (Genesis 5:1) and so on, so God's dealing with man was written down and spread both by writings and verbal accounts. As man drifted further and further apart from God it is not hard to reason how these accounts would become more and more fictional, but the funny thing is that so many ancient writings carry with them not only the teachings of the Golden Rule, but also the Flood accounts. The counterfeits come after the McCoy. God appointed Moses to compile and gather these true account once again.

First off, if the accounts became more and more fictional as man drifted further apart from God, I admit I do not understand how can Christians then claim that the Bible is the absolute word of God.

Secondly, the earliest accounts are, in fact, the accounts that we have the strongest scientific proof against. Do we have rock-hard scientific evidence that Jonah was not swallowed by a fish and lived in its belly for three days, for instance? No, we do not. These miraculous accounts are as absurd to the logical mind as much as they lack evidence, but on the flip side there's no hard evidence against them either, to the best of my knowledge. What we do have hard evidence against, on the other hand, are the earliest accounts of the Bible where God allegedly created the universe in a specific order in seven days, that all mankind was descended from one male-female pair, a global flood happened, et cetera. The accounts that we know are definitely fictional appear in the very first book of the Bible. If later accounts are more fictional compared to earlier accounts, then I'd say the entire Bible doesn't give us a lot to work on regarding the nature and existence of God.

And along the lines of religiosity, even if you are an atheist you are religious. The only difference is an atheist worships the god of self. Man is the measure of all things from the atheist world-view structure. He is his own greatest self authority and authority of everything else. But how does he know? He only presumes to know. He is gambling that his own mind is sufficiently rational and sufficiently wise to be able to discern the real McCoy - the truth.

PGA, if mankind is gambling that our own minds are sufficiently rational and wise to be able to know the real truth, why is it that Christians are absolutely convinced that they are in possession of that said real truth? By what process or mechanism does the would-be Christian mind gain this extra wisdom and rationality that suddenly allows it to perceive this hypothetical real truth?

With that said, I suspect your original intent when you said that the atheist "worships" the "god of self" was to employ dramatic wordplay. In the real world, there have been men who acted and talked as though they were gods on earth and had authority over everything else. They have either been exposed as quacks, or belong in a mental institution. I understand it is your intent to portray atheists as arrogant people who believe they are accountable to nobody and nothing, but as I see it, there's considerable arrogance right here from theists who claim to be in possession of the ultimate and absolute truth while everyone else is trapped in shallow ignorance, even if they have no evidence whatsoever to back up their claims.

You may mock and call our God hypothetical, but the point is you do not know Him in a relational way.

I apologize if I came across as mocking. I used the term "hypothetical God" not to mock, but as an expression that I do not personally believe in him yet am accepting his existence for the moment so that this discussion has some sort of common ground with which to proceed. I will drop the word in future.

On the contrary, I would contend that you are the one who is arguing from ignorance if you don't know Jesus Christ. My argument was based on one of necessity.

Actually, an argument from ignorance is a logical fallacy is made when a party in a discussion pleads that a premise has to be true, even if there is no evidence whatsoever that it is, simply because he is unable to understand or imagine any other possibility. Premise #1 of the moral argument as described in the OP is a classical example of this fallacy, as are a good number of other theist premises.

The evidence for God is cumulative. There are so many different avenues to explore that we could get lost in the grid. What I would suggest you do is start from the basic core beliefs of your world-view and see how you can justify anything. Are you an atheist? If so then lets see just how much you can actually know before you start borrowing from the Christian's core beliefs. Have you tried answering those ultimate philosophical questions?

Let me pose the question in another way. Have you ever found any real evidence that your God is the answer for all those ultimate philosophical questions, instead of simply resorting to arguments from ignorance as I described in the above paragraph?

If all we are determined to be are physical bags of atoms banging and reacting to forces (laws) that we don't even know how they got here how did we jump from inorganic, non-living matter to rational logical creatures? In the atheist world-view you start out with unguided, random, chaotic, unintentional happenstance and arrive at moral minds. The thing is that you can't have morality without MIND.You have a huge gap of information to fill in before your world-view can make any sense of itself or anything else.

We didn't jump, so to speak. It was a long and lengthy process. To give a vastly simplified reply that only borders on being accurate: inorganic, non-living matter formed self-replicating chemicals due to conditions present on early Earth. Non-perfect replication allowed mutation to take place, where, combined with selection forces where beneficial mutations were favored over non-beneficial ones depending on the conditions, evolution occurred to advance non-living chemicals into early forms of genetic code and increasingly complex organisms. As a mechanism to promote survival, some species learned that banding together into groups was more effective than foraging alone, but their behavior had to be modified accordingly to some extent in order to make group living possible, which gave rise to the Golden Rule. As mankind evolved and developed increased intellect and higher brain functions like emotions, he began to question his own actions and distinguish "good" from "bad", giving rise to the concept of morality.

I was interested to see how you developed your criticism as the posts continued. One thing that struck me was that you asked for proof against you view on the pornography battleground. I was thinking the same thing about your point of view, for it is a two-way street, but then statistics can be used in many different ways. I have more to comment on when time permits.

I admit that I made the assumption that most pornography in my country is lawful. We have companies that are registered with the government and restricted by various federal laws, with porn stars that are mini-celebrities in their own right and are often given coverage by the relevant media. I therefore made the assumption that an industry that operates and distributes its products in broad daylight right under the nose of the government, and one that employs actors who often make public appearances, and has been doing so for decades, is a fairly legitimate one.

Other than that, I live in a country with a legal system that practices the principle of innocent until proven guilty. If there is proof that the porn industry is involved in massive exploitation or other illegal activities, I would definitely love to see it so I can know which production companies to boycott.

Thanks for engaging in the debate!

Same to you.

Edited December 1, 2011 by Exaeus

[LuftWaffle]

It is not prophecy, really. Actually defectors could win if their strategy provides evolutionary advantages and then you have a morality swap. If their strategy does not provide evolutionary advantages and they win, then the species would become extinct and we would not be here talking.

Which is exactly the point. The same evolutionary storytelling that naturalists use to try to explain morality is equally capable of explaining an thoroughly immoral world. So attempting to ground morality in it leads ultimately to subjectivism.

I'd like to know:

If genocide is evil and

If brainwashing is evil and

If killing opposition is evil

how come

genocide + brainwashing + killing opposition = good

I doubt that genocide + (inheritable) brainwashing + killing opposition (redundant operation anyway because of the brainwashing), provide an optimum solution for humans living in this environments. But if it did, then this society would consider these values good. For us it is unconceivable because we are not part of this society.

Why do you doubt? Killing the opposition seems to work perfectly well in the rest of the animal kingdom.

Note also that you're essentially making a statement of faith here. You cannot know for sure what the optimum solution would be, you're simply placing faith in a certain idea as being that optimum solution. But that just pushes back the problem, why is the optimum solution for human flourishing desireable?

Well, first we have to be sure that there is something beyond this surface (the natural world); if there is nothing, then we are not superficial. I am not entitled to say: there must be something beyond nature, therefore if I restrict to nature I am superficial.

How do you even know that the natural world really exists? Is it possible that all you see and experience are mere projections of your own mind? You might say that Sollipsism is counter intuitive, and I would agree, but we already know how you feel about intuitions, right?

So if your starting point would be "things that Viole can know for sure", then why do you know for sure that the natural world really exists? Because you see it? And how do you know you're perceiving what is real? We also perceive moral imperatives, guilt, love, joy, beauty etc. and these things, you say are not strictly real.

There's a flip side to this. Do you know your thoughts? Suppose you're thinking of a particular thing, do you know that you are thinking of that particular thing? The answer would be yes, right?

Let's say you're thinking of a penguin. You would be asolutely right to say, "at this moment I am thinking of a penguin". This is called an incorrigible truth, it is something that you simply cannot be wrong about.

But yet there is no penguin inside your head, is there? That thought is immaterial; it cannot be weighed or measured, yet you know for sure that it is true.

Do you agree?

[Exaeus]

It seems then that the claim you're making is that human beings intrinsically *know* what the goal of evolution is, and that our moral judgements are essentially based on this intrinsic knowledge, is that correct?

There's a problem with your terminology, in the sense that evolution is not a sentient process and hence cannot have a premeditated goal. Evolution is guided by various factors, and if those factors change then the outcome of the evolution process will also change. If you mean whether can predict evolutionary pathways, the answer is generally no except under special circumstances. If you mean whether we know what evolution tries to achieve, I believe the answer is yes, and that evolution is a process through which various species optimize themselves for survival accordingly to their environments.

The problem is that you can dismiss any objection as "near sighted", but how is that falsifiable? Aren't you simply assuming that it's near sighted?

Have you shown that your objection is far-sighted and actually improves the fitness of the human species in the long run? What research have you carried out, using what methodologies? What data do you have to support your conclusions? The thing is, what can be postulated without evidence, can also be dismissed without evidence, as is the case of your objections.

Apart from making claims you haven't actually demonstrated anything, though. How do we know the distinction is mostly man-made? Why would that make it invalid? How do we know that our intellectual capacity and self-awareness has evolved?

Here we see the very interesting (and common!) phenomenon of theists who will make all sorts of fantastical claims without evidence in favor of their religion, but will scrutinize any and all opposing claims to the very minute detail.

But that's just as well. If science claims to operate based on evidence and logic instead of the wild claims of religion, it needs - unlike religion - to be able to stand up to such scrutiny or retract its claims. We know intellectual capacity and self-awareness arose because earlier Homo progenitors lacked the physical brain capacity for higher-level brain functions. Evidence left behind in the form of art, equipment, rituals, social patterns etc that changed over time, as well as neurostudy of higher vs lower primates, all point to increasing self-awareness and intellectual capacity as the Homo family progressed in its evolutionary path. As for why "is" and "ought" is a man-made distinction, I would've thought that was fairly obvious. "Is" and "ought" themselves are man-made terms - animals certainly don't understand them! - and hence it follows that any distinction between them is man-made as well.

The problem is that if our morality is evolved then it cannot be prescriptive. Why should a person follow any moral standard? Because that's how we evolved? Why does a person OUGHT to behave according to how they evolved? If a psychopath behaves according to his evolved morality, why do we say their apathy and selfishness is wrong?

It is wrong for the simple reason that it harms survival. Apathy and selfishness are "bad" attributes because they make social living detrimental for its members if those attributes ever come into widespread practice. Given how mankind is a species that has "chosen" superior numbers as its survival tool long ago against other stronger and faster predators and that social living is by now so engraved in the human psyche, attributes that can potentially cause the collapse of society are generally considered "bad".

As for why we ought to behave the way we do, I've already explained it repeatedly. I'm afraid your constantly asking the same questions over and over will get us nowhere. Can you be a bit more specific on what you require clarification on?

....and there are actions exhibited by animals that would be considered "immoral". On what standard do you select which animal behaviors we should emulate?

Have I ever claimed that we should emulate animal behavior? Despite your protests that you're not feigning ignorance, I can only wonder...

Let me try again, at any rate. I did not claim that animals are "moral". Most if not all other species lack the intellectual capacity to understand morality. What I said was that actions that we humans would call moral are also practiced by various other species, despite the fact that those species haven't the slightest clue that they're being "moral" by human standards. The same actions are evolutionally programmed into the psyche of many other social animals, who lack the need or desire or ability to explain their actions to themselves. Mankind on the other hand does, and morality was created as a concept to serve that purpose.

This again raises the problem of flexibility within the evolutionary paradigm as Philip Skell put it, "Further, Darwinian explanations for such things are often too supple: Natural selection makes humans self-centered and aggressive—except when it makes them altruistic and peaceable. Or natural selection produces virile men who eagerly spread their seed—except when it prefers men who are faithful protectors and providers. When an explanation is so supple that it can explain any behavior, it is difficult to test it experimentally, much less use it as a catalyst for scientific discovery."

If humans behaved utterly selfishly and cold, you'd do exactly what you're doing now. Plugging "neuro biology" in to fill the gaps.

Without knowing under what conditions Skell used to draw his assumptions, it's both pointless and futile for me to argue against his claims, which I suspect is convenient for Skell. A conclusion derived without methodology and data is nothing more than a hypothesis. Another convenient aspect for Skell is how he launches his tirade against "Darwinian explanations", when evolutionary biology has long progressed past and fleshed out Darwin's initial theories.

You're also right that if humans behaved utterly selfishly and cold, I'd do exactly what you're doing now. Except that I imagine the "neuro biology" I'd be plugging would need to be substantially different in order to account for the changes in the environment parameters and outcome. It's essentially what science is about, actually. Theories are created in order to account for known facts and observations, rather than fantastical contortions of logic being performed so as to twist the facts to fit the pre-determined theory.

[Exaeus]

This is simply false. If seems you're suggesting that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe in God, so we're just inserting God as an explanation to these gaps in our understanding. The exact opposite is true, as PGA also pointed out, there are numerous deductive reasons for believing in God forming a strong cumulative case. These are philosophically sound arguments, not mere arguments from ignorance.

Whatever those arguments may be, they apparently don't appear to be this moral argument, now that its first premise is resting on rather shaky grounds.

On the other hand it is actually the materialist who is seeking to fill the gaps with materialism, by simply imagining ways that these gaps can be filled.

I have not seen a single shred of hard evidence that a level 2 or greater multiverse exists, but this is posited to provide the probabilistic resources to answer the teleological argument.

I have not seen a single shred of hard evidence suggesting the non-uniformity of cause and effect, but this is posited to answer the cosmological argument.

I'm not sure you're quite clear on what "posit" means. The above are interpretations, not scientific facts. They have so far been unfalsifiable and are most definitely taught in science classes.

I have not seen a single shred of hard evidence suggesting that the Copernican principle is valid, but this is simply assumed to answer to the vast body of evidence that planet earth appears to be unique.

Again, I'm not sure whether the Copernican principle is currently falsifiable, or even accepted by the scientific community at large as a fact. Do you have any information to offer regarding this matter?

I have not seen a single shred of hard evidence that precambrian life was soft bodied, this is simply assumed to explain the precambrian explosion, and thus the lack of progression up to those species.

Does this help? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_type_preservation

I'm also not sure what you're arguing. Are you trying to claim that no life existed before the Cambrian explosion?

If falsifiability is important to you, then how would you falsify "survival of the fittest"?

Find an organism that thrives despite a lack of survival means. An example would be an organism that is preyed on by everything else yet lacks the means to escape, hide or defend itself, has a slow reproduction rate, does not band together for survival in numbers, etc. Can you name one?

[LuftWaffle]

Whatever those arguments may be, they apparently don't appear to be this moral argument, now that its first premise is resting on rather shaky grounds.

"Shaky grounds", based on what? Based on your ability to "imagine" naturalistic explanations and tell evolutionary stories without providing any evidence?

I'm not sure you're quite clear on what "posit" means. The above are interpretations, not scientific facts. They have so far been unfalsifiable and are most definitely taught in science classes.

You're missing the point.

Again, I'm not sure whether the Copernican principle is currently falsifiable, or even accepted by the scientific community at large as a fact. Do you have any information to offer regarding this matter?

"There's nothing special about humans or Earth -- that's the Copernican principle in a nutshell" - http://curiosity.dis...nican-principle

So, how do you falsify the notion or even prove for matter that there's nothing special about humans or Earth?

As for is acceptance, the Copernican Principle is hailed by most scientists as the cornerstone of modern astronomy.

In support of my earlier remarks, perhaps you'll find this quote by Edwin Hubble rather interesting

"Such a condition would imply that we occupy a unique position in the universe, analogous, in a sense, to the ancient conception of a central Earth…. [1] The hypothesis cannot be disproved, but it is unwelcome and would be accepted only as a last resort in order to save the phenomena. [2] Therefore, we disregard this possibility and consider the alternative … But the unwelcome supposition of a favoured location must be avoided at all costs ... Such a favoured position, of course, is intolerable ... Therefore, in order to restore homogeneity, and to escape the horror of a unique position, the departures from uniformity, which are introduced by the recession factors, must be compensated by the second term representing effects of spatial curvature. There seems to be no other escape."

I have not seen a single shred of hard evidence that precambrian life was soft bodied, this is simply assumed to explain the precambrian explosion, and thus the lack of progression up to those species.

Does this help? http://en.wikipedia....pe_preservation

I hope you're not one of those guys who simply pastes links to various articles expecting one to read through an entire text to find out how the article relates to your point.

The softbodiedness of precambrian life is simply assumed due to a lack of evidence. An article on preservation methods doesn't address this issue at all.

I'm also not sure what you're arguing. Are you trying to claim that no life existed before the Cambrian explosion?

I'm arguing that materialists often commit precisely the things that you accuse Christians of. Hence the fact that my examples were preceded by the words, "On the other hand it is actually the materialist who is seeking to fill the gaps with materialism"

Find an organism that thrives despite a lack of survival means. An example would be an organism that is preyed on by everything else yet lacks the means to escape, hide or defend itself, has a slow reproduction rate, does not band together for survival in numbers, etc. Can you name one?

How do you know it doesn't have survival means that you "simply because you are unable to understand or imagine and other possible means", to use you own words?

"Actually, an argument from ignorance is a logical fallacy is made when a party in a discussion pleads that a premise has to be true, even if there is no evidence whatsoever that it is, simply because he is unable to understand or imagine any other possibility." - Exaeus

[Exaeus]

"Shaky grounds", based on what? Based on your ability to "imagine" naturalistic explanations and tell evolutionary stories without providing any evidence?

Based on the fact that Premise #1 of this moral law, which is simply an argument from ignorance, has been shown to be false since there is another possibility that "objective" moral laws may have been derived from.

And yet again, we have a second demonstration from theists of how evidence is quite unneccesary when it comes to making pro-religion assertions, but all evidence must be thoroughly demanded from all viewpoints to the contrary.

I'm not sure you're quite clear on what "posit" means. The above are interpretations, not scientific facts. They have so far been unfalsifiable and are most definitely taught in science classes.

You're missing the point.

I think I'm quite clear on the fact that most interpretations of quantum theory are not being taught as facts since they're still unfalsifiable. The scientific community may develop various hypotheses in an attempt to explain phenomena and observations that are not yet understood, but peddling unsubstantiated claims as facts is the domain of religion instead.

"There's nothing special about humans or Earth -- that's the Copernican principle in a nutshell" - http://curiosity.dis...nican-principle

So, how do you falsify the notion or even prove for matter that there's nothing special about humans or Earth?

Which is exactly what I asked. Quantum cosmology isn't exactly my field, but to the best of my knowledge there hasn't been any serious attempt taken to falsify the principle.

As for is acceptance, the Copernican Principle is hailed by most scientists as the cornerstone of modern astronomy.

In support of my earlier remarks, perhaps you'll find this quote by Edwin Hubble rather interesting

"Such a condition would imply that we occupy a unique position in the universe, analogous, in a sense, to the ancient conception of a central Earth…. [1] The hypothesis cannot be disproved, but it is unwelcome and would be accepted only as a last resort in order to save the phenomena. [2] Therefore, we disregard this possibility and consider the alternative … But the unwelcome supposition of a favoured location must be avoided at all costs ... Such a favoured position, of course, is intolerable ... Therefore, in order to restore homogeneity, and to escape the horror of a unique position, the departures from uniformity, which are introduced by the recession factors, must be compensated by the second term representing effects of spatial curvature. There seems to be no other escape."

LuftWaffle, maybe you're not too clear on how the scientific community works. The scientific community works as a meritocracy and by results, not by blindly swallowing the opinions of one man, no matter how prestigious he may be. This isn't religion we're talking about. Certain scientists may favor certain positions while approaching their research, but until something has actually undergone the scrutiny of the scientific process, it is not science.

I hope you're not one of those guys who simply pastes links to various articles expecting one to read through an entire text to find out how the article relates to your point.

The softbodiedness of precambrian life is simply assumed due to a lack of evidence. An article on preservation methods doesn't address this issue at all.

LuftWaffle, have you actually read the article? It describes the preservation of Edicara biota, most of which are soft-bodied, which is extraordinary since in the vast majority of cases soft-bodied organisms don't usually fossilize well, or at all. The Edicara biota is used to describe the class of organisms which lived during the Ediacara period, which immediately precedes the Cambrian.

I'll take your word for it that you're not feigning ignorance, but... meh.

How do you know it doesn't have survival means that you "simply because you are unable to understand or imagine and other possible means", to use you own words?

"Actually, an argument from ignorance is a logical fallacy is made when a party in a discussion pleads that a premise has to be true, even if there is no evidence whatsoever that it is, simply because he is unable to understand or imagine any other possibility." - Exaeus

Well, I can't possibly answer that question until you actually produce an example of such an organism, can I?

[Exaeus]

BTW LuftWaffle, I'm not sure what your scientific background or level of scientific literacy is, but here's another article regarding fossilized pre-Cambrian soft-bodied organisms. The abstract of the paper explains the gist of it in a relatively straightforward manner, IMHO: http://geol.queensu.ca/people/narbonne/NarbonneAREPS2005Final.pdf

Edited December 1, 2011 by Exaeus

[LuftWaffle]

Well, I can't possibly answer that question until you actually produce an example of such an organism, can I?

That's the whole point. If it's logically impossible to provide the falsification criterium, then the idea isn't falsifiable now, is it?

The point here is that there is no way to determine the relative fitness of an organism and find any correlation with survival. It is simply assumed that things that have survived were fitter than things that didn't.

But all this is missing the point.

You made the statement, "Now, this premise cannot be falsified because it isn't based on evidence in the first place"

and I have offered a number of examples where the scientific establishment does exactly that. Sound Christian arguments are countered with imaginings that aren't based on evidence and aren't falsifiable, yet because they're rooted in naturalism they're accepted.

"Shaky grounds", based on what?

Based on the fact that Premise #1 of this moral law, which is simply an argument from ignorance, has been shown to be false since there is another possibility that "objective" moral laws may have been derived from.

Firstly, premise 1 is not an argument from ignorance.

Is isn't based on what we don't know, but it is based on what we DO know.

Objective moral laws are immaterial in that they are normative properties. We know from experience that immaterial things do not come from material things. Can you give us an example of how an "IS" can become an "OUGHT" through naturalistic means?

The only recourse for the naturalist is to deny the immaterial, which in turn leads to absurd beliefs that something can come from nothing, that information can come from non-information, that the appearance of design in the world is illusiory, that life can come from non-life and that love, joy, meaning, logic and reason are merely the byproducts of natural processes and thus are deterministic.

If it's merely an argument from ignorance that objective morals values and duties cannot exist without a transcendent moral law giver, then why do most atheists believe that morality is subjective, and the few who claim otherwise fail spectacularly to demonstrate it, but instead place their faith on future scientific discoveries?

Secondly, the alternative possibility that you proposed involved telling a story that essentially starts with a warm pond long ago and ends with a moral ape.

The fact that this ethical naturalist morality is reversible in that what is good, could be contra human flourishing and vice versa was answered simply with your assurance that a blind, unguided process such as evolution will punish the narrowsighted and reward those who *see* and play by evolution's long term goals.

I'm sorry but that's nothing more than fluff.

If good and bad are mere manifestations of genetic make-up, then are you saying there is a sadistic tyrant gene and a self-sacrificing carer gene? Any evidence for this?

And if this be true then why do we condemn Hitler and praise Mother Theresa,

if their actions are determined by their genes? Is that yet another one of those everyday human traits that we should simply dismiss as illusiory, because naturalism is incapable of explaining it?

And yet again, we have a second demonstration from theists of how evidence is quite unneccesary when it comes to making pro-religion assertions, but all evidence must be thoroughly demanded from all viewpoints to the contrary.

Is it wrong to require evidence from those who claim to be led by it and who criticise us for supposedly not having any?

I probably won't be able to respond for the next couple of days, as I have a number of things to attend to.

Which is a pity as it's been an interesting discussion thus far...

Blessings

[Exaeus]

That's the whole point. If it's logically impossible to provide the falsification criterium, then the idea isn't falsifiable now, is it?

Actually, no. You're leading this issue down a rather different path. You're asking me how would I determine if this hypothetical organism fulfils the falsification criteria, and I replied that I can't possibly know until you actually name this hypothetical organism because I don't even have any idea what kind of organism it is, much less how to do any research on it. That's a very different issue from not being able to provide the falsification criteria, which I've already done.

The point here is that there is no way to determine the relative fitness of an organism and find any correlation with survival. It is simply assumed that things that have survived were fitter than things that didn't.

LuftWaffle, I sense we have a massive disconnect here because you apparently do not understand what fitness means in biology. Fitness is a description of the degree to which a species is able survive and propagate its genes. You measure a species' fitness by its ability to survive, not the other way round.

But all this is missing the point.

You made the statement, "Now, this premise cannot be falsified because it isn't based on evidence in the first place"

and I have offered a number of examples where the scientific establishment does exactly that. Sound Christian arguments are countered with imaginings that aren't based on evidence and aren't falsifiable, yet because they're rooted in naturalism they're accepted.

Why haven't you responded to my arguments I made in reply to your examples? I have already explained to you that, of the examples you raised, three are not considered as scientific facts and one of them is flat-out wrong. As for what you call "sound Christian arguments", can you please explain exactly what sort of evidence has been produced to support the premises of these so-called sound arguments?

Firstly, premise 1 is not an argument from ignorance.

Is isn't based on what we don't know, but it is based on what we DO know.

Objective moral laws are immaterial in that they are normative properties. We know from experience that immaterial things do not come from material things. Can you give us an example of how an "IS" can become an "OUGHT" through naturalistic means?

LuftWaffle, I hate to disappoint you, but Premise #1 is a classic example of argument from ignorance. If it weren't, you would be raising solid evidence in support of it, instead of challenging me to name an alternative to what you're proposing as the only possible answer because you can't imagine anything else is possible! As for your argument about immaterialism, it is laughably false since generating energy - a non-material entity - from physical matter is well-known and taught even to grade school children in science class. Last but not least, I've repeatedly explained to you how we as an intelligent species have attempted to explain our hard-wired actions that urge us to survive by inventing the concept of morality. Can you please be specific about what you need further explanation about instead of simply repeating the same question over and over?

If it's merely an argument from ignorance that objective morals values and duties cannot exist without a transcendent moral law giver, then why do most atheists believe that morality is subjective, and the few who claim otherwise fail spectacularly to demonstrate it, but instead place their faith on future scientific discoveries?

I'm not sure what you're talking about here. I thought we were already in agreement that morality is partly objective and partly not. Also, the sad fact is that not everything atheists believe in is true, although I'd like to imagine that we have an easier time admitting it because we don't have the threat of burning in hell until the end of time hanging over our heads.

Secondly, the alternative possibility that you proposed involved telling a story that essentially starts with a warm pond long ago and ends with a moral ape.

The fact that this ethical naturalist morality is reversible in that what is good, could be contra human flourishing and vice versa was answered simply with your assurance that a blind, unguided process such as evolution will punish the narrowsighted and reward those who *see* and play by evolution's long term goals.

I'm sorry but that's nothing more than fluff.

LuftWaffle, I'm afraid I have to admit that I'm losing the plot more and more here with each prose-rich but facts-light paragraph you type out. I believe I've already clearly stated that we cannot predict evolutionary pathways; can you show us an example of what "playing by evolution's goals" means? Because it makes no sense at all to me.

If good and bad are mere manifestations of genetic make-up, then are you saying there is a sadistic tyrant gene and a self-sacrificing carer gene? Any evidence for this?

I'm not sure if this is the answer you're expecting, but actually, yes there is.

http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:tACLCjsMgTAJ:scholar.google.com/+golden+rule+genes&hl=en&as_sdt=1,5

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2006/08/the-golden-rule-christian-altruism/

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/060529_altruism.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101108072309.htm

http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/8/1460.abstract

And if this be true then why do we condemn Hitler and praise Mother Theresa,

if their actions are determined by their genes? Is that yet another one of those everyday human traits that we should simply dismiss as illusiory, because naturalism is incapable of explaining it?

LuftWaffle, the problem here is that in your scientific illiteracy, you assume that genes are solely responsible for our behavior and we are helpless to change them. Secondly, we condemn Hitler and praise Mother Teresa because it's in our best interests to weed out genes that promote destructive tendencies and encourage beneficial ones. In our quest for survival, we do not care what motivates Hitler. We only know that if the Nazis were allowed to run unchecked the entire world would be overrun and our survival put in peril. We may lash out against Hitler in the name of morality, but in fact it's because deep down inside we instinctively understand that Hitler is a threat to us all.

Is it wrong to require evidence from those who claim to be led by it and who criticise us for supposedly not having any?

Of course not. However, it is heavily hypocritical and quite double-sided to absolve yourself of all responsibility to back up your claims while demanding it of everyone else. Not to mention that, all things considered, it doesn't really make for a useful discussion.