Regardless as to whether or not morality is subjective or objective, you need to understand that me and most other atheists do consider rape and child abuse to be wrong. We don't need to know how we ultimately came to this decision to understand this fact.
So you essentially just said… we believe in objective morality, we have nothing to base it on (we don’t need to know)… we just know it’s real.
Well I agree with you on that it is real. I disagree that we don’t need to know why. I find that intellectually lazy.
You will readily accept that God grants us morality, because God's words are objective. But why is it his laws are objective and the laws of man are subjective? You will argue that it's because God is an authority. But, like other humans, what if you disagree with the authority figure? Let's suppose God revealed himself to be real and demanded I kill my own family. I'll be honest, I wouldn't obey him.
Why would I disobey God if God told me to kill my own family? His word is objective, my word is subjective. Yet, in the end, it's still a choice. Would I burn in hell for all eternity if I disobeyed God? Perhaps. But then this just tells us what we already know - that actions tend to have consequences.
So what difference would it make if God's word was objective or subjective anyway? To be quite frank, it doesn't matter. If God told me to kill my family and I disobeyed, I would suffer the consequences. The same would reign true if I was told to kill my own family by a Nazi in a concentration camp.
I don’t understand how this is relevant to the topic at hand? You’re giving some hypothetical situation and basing your reasoning on that. This seems to be leading into divine command theory and Euthyphro’s Dilemma. You wanna talk about that? While objective morality may eventually lead into that discussion, it’s still a separate topic.
You claim your morality stems from God. But I believe morality stems from man.
Wait what? Hold up… Objective means independent from human opinion. So if you claim it stems from man, it is subjective.
Does this mean morality loses all meaning and we should no longer worry about what is right and what is wrong? Of course not!
Yes, actually it does lose meaning. Of course none of us live out our lives this way even if we claim to believe this. In fact, I would claim humans cannot live independently of morality.
If God isn't real, then we must take advantage of the simple reality that we DO have emotions, and those emotions lead us to protecting one another (for the most part).
You're right! Our emotional experience, or moral environment tells us it is real… but if naturalism is true, then all morality is subjective and, therefore, illusory. An illusion hoisted upon us by evolution and social construct to help us propagate our DNA.. Nothing more. (Which is why I find naturalism so unconvincing! That's the whole point.). If anyone else can offer an alternative explanation for objective morality apart from God, I would be interested in hearing it. You can't say... Naturalism is true and objective morality is real because my emotions tell me so. If no God exists, what are objective moral values and duties based on? To be objective, it transcends human opinion.
"The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose,
no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
"The central question about moral and ethical principles concerns their ontological foundation. If they are neither derived from God nor anchored in some transcendent ground, they are
purely ephemeral."
- Paul Kurtz, Forbidden Fruit: the Ethics of Secularism
God or no God, I will do what I feel is best for myself and others. I guess we're pretty fortunate most people think that way.
Mmm. Yes, that’s pretty much the entire basis for the moral argument for the existence of God. We all somehow know objective morality exists or at least live our lives as if it did.
Because our trust in our senses, our rationality, our thoughts, WORK.
Just because our rational isn't flawless doesn't mean we can't trust it at all. Even with our flaws, trusting in our rational helps us survive.
You're under this impression that the only way something can work, is if it's flawless. And because our minds aren't flawless, we must have a flawless mind that prevents our own minds from being completely unreliable. It's a flawed assumption to think our minds must be either a.) completely flawless, b.) flawed, but guided by a perfect mind, or c.) our minds aren't flawless and therefore must be completely unreliable. You're ignoring d.) our minds are flawed, but not completely unreliable.
Hmm. I don’t recall ever saying anything about it being flawed or flawless. I said it was nothing more than colliding atoms… with no purpose or meaning… rational thoughts coming from nonrational, nonthinking mechanisms. Why would I trust that it would tell me the truth of the existence of God or not…or morality for that matter? I definitely rely on my rationality! Of course we are capable of flawed logic.. but overall rationality is reliable. Why? I believe humankind was made in the image of God… meaning we are rational, personal beings. That’s exactly why I trust it. =) I’m just asking on a naturalistic worldview how rationality can tell us anything about these kinds of questions?
What he said doesn't back up your argument, it is just an entirely different argument against naturalism.
Essentially, Lewis is arguing that naturalism itself is a rational inference, which contradicts the idea that rational inferences alone can't determine the validity of claims.
More like it’s self-refuting and yes, it pertains to my point about rationality.
The problem with this argument is that naturalism is the observation of what can be observed. Naturalists fully accept the possibility that there may be supernatural substances or entities, but it claims that if such exists - then it wouldn't be provable to begin with.
You just made up your own definition of naturalism. Look up the philosophy of naturalism in any dictionary.
Therefore, there's absolutely no difference in assuming whether supernatural phenomena exists or not.
Keep in mind, naturalism isn't necessarily gnosticism, in that we KNOW there are no supernatural entities. Most naturalists are agnostic, and refuse to waste time trying to justify reasons to believe in something that is by definition - unknowable.
Naturalism asserts there is no such thing as “super” natural.. SUPER being outside of nature.. natural laws… That’s the whole point of naturalism. =/ If you want to claim you are not a naturalist… that’s fine by me. But my question was posed to naturalists….people who don’t believe in God or the supernatural.
