The Moral Argument

[Guest]

The main difference between me and you is that I am a materialist and you aren't. Being a materialist does not make me appreciate the difference between subjectivity and objectivity. For me, subjective experiences, moral feelings of right and wrong are an emergent properties of the algorithms of our mind. In other words: subjective is what we cannot, yet, measure so that it becomes objective. The integration of neurobiology and information sciences is still in its infancy, but we cannot rule out that we will, in the future, objectify subjectivity, in the same way we can deterministically anticipate the results of some electronic computation. How these algorithms have been implanted can be discussed separately (God, evolution or else), but first we must see if this makes sense.

Even A Material Girl

And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; [And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. Genesis 2:21-22

Can Fall In Love

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2

With Her Lord

But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.

And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands: They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; Hebrews 1:8-11

Her God

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. Revelation 3:20

Her Maker

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. John 1:1-3

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I would like to carry out a little gedankenexperiment: suppose you have a man in his forties (mister X). He always carried a honest and loving life. One day he buys a gun and shoots down a young girl he never met before. When asked by the police why he did it, he answers that he did it because he was bored and he did not really cared to have generated a lot of suffering. Do you think that this guy should be unconditionally condemned for what he did? If yes, why?

Dear Sister

There Is Nothing Surprising

About The Deprived Heart Of The Sinner

But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death. Proverbs 8:36

And Yet God

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

Has His Own Sense Of Justice Called Divine Mercy

Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:

Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Romans 3:22-27

Can You Believe It?

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. John 6:47

Yes?

The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. John 3:35-36

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A Very Short Prayer From A Very Sincere Fellow

Lord, save me Matthew 14:30(e)

Love, Joe

[PGA]

Hi Viole,

Wow, shotgun posts I know, I started that. -Viole

Both barrels, sorry. I have nothing left but the Word of God.

The main difference between me and you is that I am a materialist and you aren't. Being a materialist does not make me appreciate the difference between subjectivity and objectivity. For me, subjective experiences, moral feelings of right and wrong are an emergent properties of the algorithms of our mind. In other words: subjective is what we cannot, yet, measure so that it becomes objective. The integration of neurobilogy and information sciences is still in its infancy, but we cannot rule out that we will, in the future, objectify subjectivity, in the same way we can deterministically anticipate the results of some electronic computation. How these algorithms have been implanted can be discussed separately (God, evolution or else), but first we must see if this makes sense. -Viole

subjective

  adj

1.

existing in the mind; belonging to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought (opposed to objective).

2.

pertaining to or characteristic of an individual; personal; individual: a subjective evaluation.

3.

placing excessive emphasis on one's own moods, attitudes, opinions, etc.; unduly egocentric.

4.

Philosophy. relating to or of the nature of an object as it is known in the mind as distinct from a thing in itself.

5.

relating to properties or specific conditions of the mind as distinguished from general or universal experience.

objective

—adj

1. existing independently of perception or an individual's conceptions: are there objective moral values?

2. undistorted by emotion or personal bias

3. of or relating to actual and external phenomena as opposed to thoughts, feelings, etc

Well, as a materialist you would have to explain everything from an empirical view of the universe, would you not? If so, then how do you explain things like logic, that has no physicality to it? IOW, how does something non-physical originate from the physical?

From your paragraph above you seem to be suggesting that we are nothing more that advanced biological machines and that our actions are determined by the way our chemical-electrode impulses react. Is that correct? If so, are you saying that right and wrong are just physical regions of the brain??? How would you get degrees of measurement such as good, better, best from physical impulses?

In order to avoid a combinatorial explosion of subjects to debate, we should focus on a subject at a time, if you agree. -Viole

I'm OK with that, but I would request that you come back to some of my points later since I invested time in replying and they were put there to prove a point (hopefully to develop/show the inadequacy of such a worldview in making sense of itself), in that a 'materialist/philosophical naturalist/secular humanist cannot make sense of these matter, or ultimately any, without first borrowing from the Christian point of view.

I would like to carry out a little gedanken experiment: suppose you have a man in his forties (mister X). He always carried a honest and loving life. One day he buys a gun and shoots down a young girl he never met before. When asked by the police why he did it, he answers that he did it because he was bored and he did not really cared to have generated a lot of suffering. Do you think that this guy should be unconditionally condemned for what he did? If yes, why? -Viole

I hope this is a hypothetical situations, not a situation that you or your loved ones have experienced.

What is his definition of honesty and love? It certainly misses the mark. He is definitely showing that he does not understand what love is, or for that matter how much suffering he could/would create with this act? The act was performed out of boredom as its justification. I'm sure the reason goes a lot deeper. On the information given his actions need to be condemned so that justice can be met. He took another life by actions that were premeditated on his part in buying a gun with the purpose of using it. He showed that he could not act responsibly or in a loving manner. Even if this lady committed a crime, it is not for an individual to take matters of vengeance into their own hands. That is why we have justice systems. God is ultimately the One who we have to answer for our wrongful/sinful acts.

Those are my thoughts on the issue.

Ciao, ciao,

Peter

[PGA]

Sorry Viole, I missed posting this yesterday.

I've not seen an atheist who can make sense of the moral dilemma. If you are atheist you and I look at life from two different world-views that both require faith. We both have biases and we both believe that what we believe is true or else we would no longer believe it. So what I am asking is for you to show me how your opinion conforms to objectivity. I don't think you succeeded in explaining it below, but it just might be me who cannot fathom your response. –Me

It is a difficult subject, but sometimes atheists (e.g. Sam Harris or D. Dennet) try to make sense of it. It could be that it does not make sense to you or to me, but I would not generalize it so that it does not make sense to anybody. For that matter, I don't know any (a)theist that knows exactly how the universe was born. But ignorance does not logically justify a fall back into belief of a creator. "Unexplained" in natural terms does not necessarily imply "unexplainable" in natural terms. –Viole

I don’t think either Dawkins, Dennet, Harris or Hitchens has been successful in making sense of it from what I have heard of their arguments, and I’ve heard a few of them. I noticed you included me as not being able to make sense of it. I am not claiming that I can’t make sense of it. I am claiming the exact opposite because God is the authority that I look up to. If you think you know ‘A’ and your knowledge of ‘A’ is false then you really don’t know ‘A’ at all. I can know because and only because God has revealed, or because I think His thoughts after Him.

Objectivity means for me, primarily, observable, testable and measurable. If we find a one-to-one relationship between love and the electrical activation of some brain's area, then love is objective since it can be measured: everybody, by checking the brain's scan of a patient will say: yes, this person is in love. –Viole

OK, the first sentence is fine as to objectivity although I think we need to expand on it for the definition I'm using. Please see the previous post.

So how do you observe, test a one-time event, an event outside the brain, that happened in the distant past before mankind? Can you repeat the event scientifically to verify it? I think your conclusion will depend on how you interpret the data/event.

And I don't think that atheism is a faith. It is actually the contrary, it is lack of faith for things that do not have an objective evidence; and things that show an objective existence do not need faith to be believed. –viole

What is faith? In the case of origins it believes in something that it has not yet seen. In the case of life or macro-evolution the same is true. In believing anything it is necessary to start with something else, and then again something else, until you get down to the core belief(s) itself (themselves) on which all else rests. You build your beliefs. For you it is that there is no God is what you build on. That requires faith. In fact it requires faith to believe anything at all. You do not have objective, testable, verifiable, repeatable evidence for the cause of the universe, or of life, or of consciousness. You first have to presuppose many things in order to arrive at your position. As Jesus said, it is important as to what kind of foundation you build your house on. Ideas are on very shaky grounds if your foundation is not secure and properly grounded.

To call atheism faith would be equivalent to say that somebody has the hobby of not collecting stamps. I am aware that the word "atheism" has a psychologically laden meaning in countries like the U.S.A or Saudi Arabia but if you come to visit my country you would notice that this word is not used very often, since "atheism" is the default position: to say: "look, an atheist!" would be so silly as saying "look: this girl has blue eyes and blond hair!". I am not aware of blonde blue-eyed girls that can make sense of morality, either...Well, maybe, I know one -Viole

We can call your faith whatever you want to call it – atheism, unbelief in one kind of presupposition and belief in another, secular humanism, naturalistic philosophy, man as the measure of all things. What would you like to call what you believe?

belief

Noun: 1. An acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists.

2. Something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held opinion or conviction.

Synonyms: faith - trust - confidence - persuasion - credence

faith

Noun: 1. Complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

2. Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

Synonyms: belief - trust - confidence - credence - credit

[LuftWaffle]

The thought experiment is interesting and seems to rely on a morally difficult question, somewhat akin to what one sees on TV shows such as The Practice and the Law and Order series.

What I don't really see is how a morally difficult question serves to disprove the existence of moral absolutes. In fact it would only seem logical that the difficulty of certain moral questions underscores the importance of getting to the RIGHT moral solution. If there wasn't an absolute right and wrong, then morally difficult questions become easy. One could simply flip a coin or make a ruling based on the weather since there are no right or wrong solutions anyway.

So while I think PGA has offered excellent responses in favour of moral absolutes I find the thought experiment rather anemic, and as such look forward to seeing Viole provide answers to PGA's points.

But let's now suppose that during a medical visit in prison, they find he has a brain tumor the size of a golf ball that affects his empathy centers. After removal of the tumor, he feels appalled for what he did.

I find the fact that he feels remorse rather interesting. If he didn't do anything apalling then why would he feel apalled? If he didn't feel apalled then the thought experiment loses its force.

The other thing with thought experiments such as these is that they generally take on the form

1. Something evil happens.

2. Some hidden information is provided that lessens the evilness of the ocurrence.

3. Therefore morality isn't objective.

It seems to me that these arguments must first recognise that 1 is evil. This thought experiment would be useless if it read as follows:

A guy who leads a good life, suddenly gets bored and....eats some peanuts. Later medical examinations show that he had a tumour affecting his apathy centres...etc. etc.

OR

A guy who leads a good life, suddenly gets bored and...waves to a passerby that he encounters in the street....

It seems the thought experiment only works if the guy does something evil, but since the thought experiment is an attempt to disprove the existence of objectively evil things, the thought experiment seems to defeat itself. It must use an evil act in its first premise which it cannot recognise.

This seems to be the case with most of these morally "gray" scenarios.

Just my 2 cents.

[LuftWaffle]

Hi Luft,

Welcome back

Thanks

I am not trying to prove that absolute moral values certainly do not exist. I just argue that they do not necessarily exist. It is a small but relevant difference. I find it not logically tenable to extend some properties shared by a certain set of beings, to all possible sets without some evidence.

I don't recall us arguing that morality extends to all beings. It seems you don't understand the meaning of a moral absolute. Moral absolutes mean that given a certain set of circumstances, there is a right and a wrong thing to do, regardless of subjective opinion or preference. Moral absolutes do not mean that certain actions are always wrong.

We, as humans, share a certain set of moral values. But is it enough to say that these values are universal? I don't see how, for we have experience only with a restricted set of beings (us). I can imagine an alien race that generate some many children, that killing most of them (to improve survival of the remaining) might be sensed as a universal moral value to them. They would also be mistaken to extend their morals to us.

Imagings do not make for good responses to the points raised thus far, but I'm curious though: If morality only applies to homo sapiens, why do you believe that it's wrong for God to have brought about the Noahic flood? Surely if God isn't a human being then by virtue of your own argument your moral views need not apply to God?

Feeling appalled is an emotional response; but the best we can say, with the evidence available, is that is a human response. To promote it to universal, tastes a bit like question begging and anthropocentrism: if I feel like that, then the rest of the universe must feel like that... Sorry, not enough evidence; maybe you are right, maybe you are not. And you cannot invoke God here without introducing your conclusion into the premise.

The guy in the thought experiment was human, so speculating about non-human feeling really doesn't seem germane to the point.

What's wrong with anthropocentrism? OR chauvinism OR racism, for that matter?

What about my point that your argument only works with evil deeds in premise 1? You haven't really answered that, unless I missed it.

If the thought experiment only works with evil deeds, then the argument defeats itself since it relies on the deed being seen as evil before the hidden twist is introduced.

Invoking God in the moral argument isn't question begging because God(or atleast some moral law giver) is necessary for objective moral values to exist.

Would you call it question begging if I argued that since person X is a bachelor he doesn't have a wife?

But that is all that I can say: violence activates an emotional response. Many things activate emotional responses; for instance, I feel pleasure when I eat pizza or when I listen to Bach.

So the emotional response that you'd feel when for instance somebody brutally kills somebody dear to you is nothing more than the same chemical sort of chemical response that eating pizza creates in your mind? Would you tell the judge that when the killer is apprehended or will you cry for justice instead?

See, clever materistic excuses such as these are limited to lofty conversations on internet forums. I have yet to see somebody actually living out such ideas. Your views are thrown out the window the minute somebody cuts in front of you in the freeway.

Which says something about the two opposing worldviews in this discussion. Christianity has an explanation for morality and it's practically livable. Atheism doesn't have an explanation apart from deferring to future scientific discovery (faith in other words) and it isn't practically livable either.

The example I took is a variation of something that really happened (a guy started developing pedophilia as a consequence of a brain tumor). The interesting thing is that many, if not all, people I ask are ready to revise their initial rage. But what is the agency of the murder? Tumors are not conscious so they cannot be considered autonomous agencies for this particular act. The guys cannot be considered totally responsible either since he could not exercise his healthy free will. Does that mean that biological entities can affect our immaterial free will and our soul? If this is the case, isn't it possible that our healthy free will is also a physical entity?

That doesn't follow. You're saying X affects Y therefore X is the cause of Y.

That's like saying, applying a magnet to your computers harddrive affects the data stored on it, therefore it's possible that the emails, pictures, spreadsheets, music and other information on your harddrive has as its final cause, a magnet.

Would you like to respond to what PGA asked you, how does something non-physical such as morality come from something physical?

[PGA]

Hi LuftWaffle, Viole,

Sorry, I'm pressed for time tonight, probably tomorrow too, but I'll respond when I get some spare time, except for a few comments.

Good points LuftWaffle!

So the emotional response that you'd feel when for instance somebody brutally kills somebody dear to you is nothing more than the same chemical sort of chemical response that eating pizza creates in your mind? Would you tell the judge that when the killer is apprehended or will you cry for justice instead?

See, clever materistic excuses such as these are limited to lofty conversations on internet forums. I have yet to see somebody actually living out such ideas. Your views are thrown out the window the minute somebody cuts in front of you in the freeway.

Which says something about the two opposing worldviews in this discussion. Christianity has an explanation for morality and it's practically livable. Atheism doesn't have an explanation apart from deferring to future scientific discovery (faith in other words) and it isn't practically livable either. -LuftWaffle

If we are just biological bags of atoms that react to the way our electro-chemicals fizz then what makes what anyone does evil or bad? How do we measure goodness or evil on such a basis as anything other than atoms banging together?

Viole, apart from the fact that this man premeditated the murder in buying the gun, there remains a dead girl. and probably a family left to their sorry. The fact that he feels remorse suggests that the act goes further than just the tumour pressing in on a part of the man's brain, as LuftWaffle mentioned. But regardless, if we are just chemicals fizzing together why do the majority seek justice for such acts as murder?

I'd like to dig up a biblical example that may be relevant to this scenario and the additional details, but that too will have to wait.

Edited October 25, 2011 by PGA

[LuftWaffle]

Just to clarify, I define here when I consider an act as wrong:

I (viole) identify a morally wrong act with an act, usually involving humans hurting other humans, that causes me a (negative) emotional response. The feeling is similar, but not identical, to the feeling I have when my brain processes other circimstances, not necessarily morally relevant, like, for instance, the killing of a baby perpetrated by a shark. My brain marks such acts as wrong, in the same way it marks other situations wrong whenever they involve my self-preservation or the preservation of beings genetically close to me.

That's it. We can promote these feelings to being universal, but I do not have evidence that they make sense or even exist without our own existence and the particular structure and functioning of our brains. That does not mean that they are not important (since they might be mechanisms of self-preservation or preservation of our genes), but are important only, at least, within our humanity and the place we occupy in nature.

First you say that you consider something wrong because it invoke an emotional response in you, and then it seems you extend that to something that's important within the scope of humanity. How do you get from important to Viole to important to humanity. Why should anybody care what emotions you have?

If somebody killed somebody dear to you, would you want justice, or would you claim that nothing objectively bad has happened, you're just having a chemical reaction to the event. Why is your chemical reaction more valid than the chemical pleasure that the killer experiences when murdering?

In this respect, I consider these feelings objective, since I do not see any logical or epistomological barrier that prevents them from being objectively measured one day.

This is nothing but word play. You're redefining "objective" to mean something new so that you can claim to be objective when whimsical subjectivity makes you look silly.

This is a good point, but it is actually a point for me. I never said that what God did was wrong in an absolute sense (I do not believe in absolute wrongs).

Then you have lost the right to make moral judgements on anything. You personal preferences simply do not matter, in the same way that my mobile phone doesn't have the right to comment on how I treat the microwave oven.

This is correct, I could have said that his tumor also caused him to lose his love for chocolate. But since I do not consider the love of chocolate an absolute universal, in the same way I cannot conclude that his sense of right or wrong is, without begging the question.

Actually you are begging the question. You're simply stating that loving chocolate is a non-absolute just like murder, thereby assuming what you're trying to say, but the fact remains, your thought experiment loses its force unless it starts off with an evil deed. Why don't you do yourself a favour, go and ask people how they see a guy who lives a good life and then eats a packet of peanuts. Then is found to have a tumour. Do it and see if your thought experiment is as forceful as it is with an evil deed? Then come back and explain to us why your thought experiment fails unless you presuppose that murder is evil? Why is one aggregate of chemicals interacting with another aggregate of chemicals and evil thing and another one isn't?

That is correct, but it still fits with my definition of acts I deem wrong. They are wrong because they activates an emotional response and because of that they are marked as wrong. They do not activate an emotional response because they are wrong in some abstract sense.

Prove it. Simply stating that there isn't an immaterial wrongness and that it's all chemical serves nothing except to reiterate your own beliefs.

As a counter point all I need to do to point to a wrong act, such as genocide and unless people have a vested interest in denying morality, they'll declare such an act as wrong. In fact you have proven many times that you're quick to make moral judgements that you expect other to adhere to, thereby contradicting the position that you've taken now.

Do you believe it's wrong for Westboro Baptist Church to picket the funerals of gay people? Or do you just not prefer it, in the same way you prefer a BigMac over a CheeseRoyale?

Well Christianity had an explanation for the formations of rainbows and why the earth appears to be at the center of the universe (both livable explanations), so I am not sure that the fact that X has an explanation, then this explanation must be true by necessity. I am not proving that naturalism is right, I just state that it is a worldview which cannot be swept so easily under the carpet, and as long as there are possible alternatives, then we cannot prove that one of the two is necessarily right.

I'm not prepared to run down rabbit trails regarding rainbows and other misrepresentations.

Simply stating that naturlism cannot be swept under the carpet doesn't make it so. Placing your faith on "other alternatives" is nothing more than wishful thinking. The glory days when atheists could simply sit back and shoot down ideas without carrying any intellectual burden of their own are long gone, Viole. You have to account for reality just as much as we do, and thus far, apart from imagining other possibilities and alien moralities and hoping that science will bail you out in future you have provided no answers whatsoever.

You have given no explanation for how a non-physical thing like morality can arise from physical matter, neither have you explained why such things should even be regarded important. By your own moral judgements you have proven that the minute you are offended in some way, you take your naturalist hat off, and put on your moral hat, appealing to right and wrong.

These are two different things. When we say "a bachelor does not have a wife" we actually state a tautology. Saying that "everything that exists must have a giver of its existence" is not. You have to actually prove that, so that morality (among other existing things) actually has a giver. If it were indeed also a tautology, then that would be valid (only on logical grounds) for all existing things; in other words: things or beings that do not need a giver for their existence, could not possibly exist

Except that I didn't merely state that a bachelor is unmarried. I concluded that such and such has no wife based on him being a bachelor. That is not a tautology. Because a bachelor necessarily has no wife it is sound logic to conclude if someone is a bachelor they have no wife. Rephrasing my point into a tautology and then claiming that it's a tautology isn't very admirable.

And in doing so, you've dodged the point that I made which was, "It's not question begging to posit a moral law giver because such is necessary if moral absolutes exist". You know this, which is why against all practical sense, you're denying moral absolutes, and instead opt to ground morality in subjectivity.

That doesn't follow. You're saying X affects Y therefore X is the cause of Y.

That's like saying, applying a magnet to your computers harddrive affects the data stored on it, therefore it's possible that the emails, pictures, spreadsheets, music and other information on your harddrive has as its final cause, a magnet.

I see where you are going. I also love chocolate and I cannot exclude a-priori that a brain tumor would make me hate chocolate. That does not mean that love-of-chocolate disappears as a concept, at least as long as the last chocolate lover is alive. And when the last chocolate-lover dies, what sense does it make to say that chocolate-love is an absolute value? Well, then everything, including chocolate-hate is an universal value.If a tumor can individually affect love-of-chocolate and sense-of-right-and-wrong, I fail to see a qualitative difference between the two concerning their psychological or algorithmic origin. Since nobody ever proposed a love-of-chocolate argument for the existence of God, I assume that we give a bias to morally relevant perceptions, but this could also be due a human adaptation that improves our chances to survive and propagate our genes, and is functional and useful only within this context.

I have no idea what you're trying to say here. In terms of morality, saying that physical influences affect morality doesn't follow that physical things cause morality. In order to refute that you need to explain why you believe that logic works differently in this case.

In the meantime I'd like you to explain to me "What's wrong with anthropocentrism? OR chauvinism OR racism, for that matter?"

I'm sorry that I have to be this strict, but you have a habit of dodging questions relying on pseudo-logical objections, red herrings and rambling down rabbit trails, so I'm forced to emphasize points that you have missed.

[LuftWaffle]

“But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. . . . As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. . . . The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.”

― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

[LuftWaffle]

“But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. . . . As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. . . . The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.”

― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

...I wonder what this has to do with the current discussion

Yeah, who knows... I mean the topic is about morality and Chesterton makes some accurate statements about inconsistencies in sceptics'....moral claims....

You're right, totally off-topic. My bad.

Lets stick to rainbows, geocentricity and aliens then, yes?

[LuftWaffle]

I am not sure we are talking about men trampling on morality or morality trampling on men, whatever that means. But even if that was the case, that represents about 1% of this post. And more importantly, I don't think he proves anything at all.

If intellectual support to assess the existence of objective morality must come from a novelist, then we are in a pretty bad shape.

Interesting to see the quote struck a nerve. Meaauw, eh?

LOL, You're so transparent