I have a question for my non-theist readers: Why is it that I can chop up a tomato and eat it, but I cannot do the same to a human being?
July 2, 2012
What’s the difference between fruit and humans?
Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Human Exceptionalism, Philosophy, Relativism, Tactics[33] Comments
Thinking to Believe 
July 2, 2012 at 11:33 am
Humans can ask you not to eat them. Vegetables can’t.
There are other reasons, of course. But that’s a big one.
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July 2, 2012 at 11:39 am
Because of the level of consciousnes, in line with the UN and with Morgan’s Canon, Lamberth’s argument from autonomy, notes that we are free beings.Our evolved moral sense forbids us to murder as it reflects empathy that we now should take from the “tribe” to the planetary ethic that Mr. Humanist, Paul Kurtz heartily recommends. His ‘ Forbidden Fruit” notes how some things rightly repulse us , but we need no God to know that!
As men of yore just made up theistic moralities out of their simple misanthropic whims and tastes, those moralities serve us poorly!
To ask that question reflects a poor moral sense!
We see consequences for the better or worse for sentient beings and the environment such that we make rules and virtues. Google covenant morality for humanity-the presumption of humanism for an incisive but inchoate case for humanism.
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July 2, 2012 at 11:55 am
tomato goes well with salad
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July 2, 2012 at 1:38 pm
Seeing as how our morals differ from culture to culture, from time to time, I am sure that this has happened in some cultures, and is still happening in others. Cannibalism has always been apart of some societies. We evolve passed that as we grow our society over time. It is best for the group. Group morals are always changing to help the group survive. This concept of morality is pretty easy to understand, I think. Plus I’ve hear that we don’t taste that good, and in some cases, give us diseases. Then there’s the fact that we don’t have to. I’m sure if we were starving and there happened to be a human cadaver in front of us, we would eat it before we would starve.
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July 2, 2012 at 2:22 pm
NotaScientist, why should that matter? You seem to presume, like Griggs, that consciousness is what gives someone value. But why think that it true? Prove it. The fact of the matter is that in the abscence of God, value is a subjective term with no foundation in reality. It is just a facade for “what I happen to like.” While you may value your personal preferences, that is not a good reason for someone who does not share them to do the same.
And how can there be a moral duty to humans but not to animals, such that we should not kill and eat the former but can the latter? What sense do moral values make in an atheistic world? They, like any other value, are the subjective opinions of individuals and cultures. Duties don’t many any sense in the absence of persons because the very concept of “obligation” only applies to persons, so unless we have moral obligations to a transcendent person, there can be no objective moral duties. You might say that we have obligations to each other, and we are persons. True, but while that makes sense of obligations, it does not get you “objective obligations.” Such obligations are subjective and can be changed on a whim. There just is no getting around the fact that moral values and moral obligations have no ontological grounding on a naturalistic worldview. You don’t need God to recognize the truth of the moral values you intuit, but you definitely need God to make sense of where they come from and why they are true.
Jason
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July 2, 2012 at 2:27 pm
Griggs,
I already spoke to the conciousness criterion in response to NotAScientist, so I won’t repeat myself here.
As for your evolutionary explanation of morality, that does nothing to undermine theistic ethics because the two deal with different issues. Theistic ethics explains the ontological foundation of ethics. Even if I agreed that our knowledge of moral values came via an evolutionary process, that does not undermine the need to provide an ontological foundation for those values. The alternative is to say that morals are not objective, but I hope you see the rational and moral bankruptcy involved in such moral relativism.
And no, my question does not reflect a poor moral sense. It reflects a desire to understand how one grounds their ethical intuitions that it is wrong, objectively wrong, to chop up and eat a human but it is morally permissible to do the same to a tomoto. One needs to provide a rational framework for understanding their intuitions. That’s what I’m asking atheists to do. Unless they are going to embrace theism or Platonism, they will siimply have to give up their belief in the objectivity of moral values and moral duties.
Jason
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July 2, 2012 at 2:29 pm
Jason, on your version of social relativism, you could never say that anything is truly wrong, including rape, murder, intolerance, etc. All of these are just social preferences that are subject to change. Is that really the avenue you want to go down?
Jason
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July 2, 2012 at 3:17 pm
Jason, ah, no, ti’s you who rely on an egregious simple morality whilst rely on wide-reflective subjectivism that means that we should use our considered moral judgment to override our mere whims and tastes, whilst private ideas in each of us they are inter-subjective ,following our evolved moral sense that we do refine: most see slavery as wrong whilst the writers of the Tanakh used their egregious simple subjectivism. Now, in the hands of Lord Russell or Michael Ruse, simple subjectivism can be good.
Your egregious morality has evolved over time to become more like that of humanism such that you theists now rely on ours when you use that sense with reason and facts instead of that of those men of yore who sanction slavery and slaying children for cheeking their parents.
Adding God here makes no additional claim as adding Him as a metaphysical reason personal explanation does to natural causes! Just as morality as Plato notes is independent of Him.so science and philosophy can be independent of Him also!
When one self-brainwashes not to even imagine that others can be moral without a moral-law giver,yes, one would then be as you but reality requires that people use their own consciences, that refined moral sense than the divine sanction. Why, with the theistic relativism due to the many faiths, God speaks with a forked tongue!
Your moral foundation lies in the mere rantings of those misanthropes whilst ours lies in the hearts of humanity!
Richard Carrier recommends his goal theory,similar to mine, in “Sense and Goodness without God: a Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism.”
John Beversluis explains how this wide-reflective subjectivism I gave it this name.] operates in ” C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion.”
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July 2, 2012 at 4:32 pm
If I saw something in your response other than assertions and ad hominems, I might be able to respond.
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July 3, 2012 at 10:37 am
“NotaScientist, why should that matter?”
Why shouldn’t it?
“You seem to presume, like Griggs, that consciousness is what gives someone value. But why think that it true? Prove it.”
Consciousness gives someone value to me, personally. I prove it by saying it and acting on that value by not harming those with consciousness.
I don’t acknowledge a type of value that isn’t dependent on people to have it.
“While you may value your personal preferences, that is not a good reason for someone who does not share them to do the same.”
Show me someone who doesn’t value other conscious people, and show me a successful society they have put together based on that lack of value.
I’ll wait.
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July 3, 2012 at 11:56 am
You tell me why it should matter. In this thread, it’s your beliefs on trial, not mine. Don’t try shifting the burden of proof.
So X has value because you say it does. Wow. I would hate to be the person that you say has no value, because suddenly they would lose it. In your world of subjective value, someone’s value and rights depend on whims of people like you. Watch out, lest one day someone consider you to be lacking in value.
The success of a society has nothing to do with the truth of a proposition. Utility may be nice, but it is not tantamount to truth, and it is not a justification for believing some proposition to be true. After all, some falsehoods work well too. You need to do more than say “believing the made up rule that conscious people are valuable makes for a good society” to give someone any reason for believing that it is true.
Jason
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July 3, 2012 at 12:11 pm
“Wow. I would hate to be the person that you say has no value, because suddenly they would lose it.”
Hopefully, you’ll never become a tomato. (Which is actually a fruit, not a vegetable.)
“In your world of subjective value, someone’s value and rights depend on whims of people like you. ”
Not on whims.
On rationally considered decisions that are difficult to come by, but worth the effort.
“Watch out, lest one day someone consider you to be lacking in value.”
I’m sure plenty of people do. Which is why I’m glad we have things like constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and police.
“The success of a society has nothing to do with the truth of a proposition.”
It does when dealing with something like morality.
If the morality doesn’t create a successful society, what reason do I have to accept that morality?
“After all, some falsehoods work well too.”
Such as?
“You need to do more than say “believing the made up rule that conscious people are valuable makes for a good society” to give someone any reason for believing that it is true.”
No I don’t. Utility and pragmatism are more than enough for me.
If it isn’t enough for you, too bad.
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July 3, 2012 at 2:13 pm
Thanks for correcting my mislabeling of tomatoes as a vegetable (corrected the title for consistency), but you evaded my question.
Rationally considered, perhaps, but objective…no.
Constitutional freedoms are decided by the people who write and amend them, and if those people think like you, they can write and amend constitutions to exclude people like you.
I agree that utilitiy is important for telling us what is moral, but it does not tell us why it is moral or where morality comes from. Neither does it entail that the morality is objective. After all, not every useful behavior is a moral one. That’s why you can’t reduce morality to utility. There is a qualitative difference about moral issues that needs to be grounded in reality.
Imaginary numbers works well in mathematics, but it has no resemblance to reality. Believing you are being stalked by tigers could have a survival benefit, but it need not be true. Etc.
It appears that you have very little interest in public discussion and persuasion. Your attitude of “it works for me” sounds a lot like the attitudes of religious people you criticize.
Jason
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July 3, 2012 at 3:13 pm
Jason, how about answering my critique of your theistic ethic-that egregious simple subjectivism?
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July 3, 2012 at 3:19 pm
What exactly was that critique? I can’t make out half of what you are saying because you never develop a single train of thought with premises, reasons, and a conclusion. You are all over that map in your comments. You do a lot of name dropping and idea-naming, but I glean little in terms of the large picture of your point.
Jason
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July 3, 2012 at 3:31 pm
It is that the Tanakh contains commands for genocide and honors that putative Deluge and its commandments as a whole -not just the ten- stem from the minds of misanthropes, not putative God. The Christian Testament also comes from such minds with its divine protection plan.
I suggest you read carefully instead of using your blinders! I reread that post,finding it lucid. To go beyond us, what do others here say about my style
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July 3, 2012 at 3:33 pm
Reblogged this on Fr. Griggs and commented:
Jason ever loves nonsence! My post of July2 at3:17 is pellucid.
What do you opine about my comments?
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July 3, 2012 at 3:36 pm
I am not as concerned about your style as your substance, and I find it lacking. Develop an argument and support it with evidence rather than name-dropping and name-calling. I don’t have much patience for rhetoric. Let’s talk facts and evidence.
And I don’t see what the OT has to do with this. Even if I agreed that the Biblical God is immoral, it would have nothing to do with whether or not morals are objective or need to be grounded in God, and it does nothing to help you answer the question I posed in my post.
Jason
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July 3, 2012 at 3:38 pm
notascientist, indeed. He seems to have that prejudgment to ignore what we state with instead what he thinks we should think. Do you agree?
What do you think about my comments ?
htp://fathergriggs.wordpress.com
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July 3, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Please answer why you think that God rules when any ethic stems from humans.
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July 3, 2012 at 4:35 pm
I don’t understand your question, Griggs.
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July 4, 2012 at 6:29 am
“Rationally considered, perhaps, but objective…no.”
Don’t believe morals can be 100% objective. And don’t much care. I just care that it’s better than ‘this bronze-age book tells us its this way cause god said so!’
“Constitutional freedoms are decided by the people who write and amend them, and if those people think like you, they can write and amend constitutions to exclude people like you.”
They can.
But they also listen to debate and rationality. If they don’t, I can leave or fight back.
Welcome to the way history has worked.
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July 9, 2012 at 5:17 am
Jason, You and I know that an atheist has no basis for an objective morality, and so they are left with the same view as NotAScientist, which is an interesting view.
In this way, if I managed to create a civilisation on the subjugation of women being merely cattle for breeding (from puberty), and the cannibalism of children (say the firstborn of every woman), then NotAScientist would have to believe that it was a moral society. Something that many atheists would struggle with.
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July 9, 2012 at 7:39 am
“In this way, if I managed to create a civilisation on the subjugation of women being merely cattle for breeding (from puberty), and the cannibalism of children (say the firstborn of every woman), then NotAScientist would have to believe that it was a moral society. ”
No I wouldn’t.
And all I would have to do, beyond looking at my own morality, was ask the women in your hypothetical civilization what they thought.
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July 9, 2012 at 8:22 am
The egregious simple subjectivism of theism cannot gainsay the more humane simple subjectivism of Lord Russell and Michael Ruse much less the wide-reflective subjectivism with its two objective features that altogether goes with humanist objective morality.
That morality depends on the objective consequences of good and evil on sentient beings and the environment, and so when others criticize consequentialism, they ignore that it itself condemns evil consequences and so they invert matters to fit their egregious simple subjectivism that those miserable,mean-minded misanthropes just made up from their tastes and whims. Now, to obviate this problem, it does no good to argue, well, not particularly those specific ethics but general theistic ethics. Now, should they be decent ethics, then they partake of humanism with its stance for reason and facts intead of those tastes and whims.
So, just what is that theist ethical standard that doesn’t depend on that tragic one? How are the virtues that it proclaims different from those of humanism?
That is we humanists don’t rely on that egregious simple subjectivism that theists claim when they prattle that we rely on their moralty when instead when they do real morality, they are using ours!
All this becomes easier to comprehend when one takes off the blinders of faith!Theists have to comprehend this on its terms instead of their straw man!
Paul Kurtz and Arthur Caplan are moralists whilst those theist men of yore were misanthropes!
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July 9, 2012 at 6:40 pm
Don’t you resent that straw man? Do you agree at least in part with me?
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July 10, 2012 at 12:50 am
Who is your comment directed to, Griggs? And to what are you asking him or me to agree on?
Jason
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July 10, 2012 at 1:35 am
Oh, the last comment was to notascientist. Would he agree that consequences matter and that they are public , making for objectivity in that sense just as science is and is also debatablle.
And what is your response to the one before that one?
Anybody, how do we exhort any immoralist to become moral? I don’t favor divine threats and such.
Jason and others, I hope that I am not too ornate in style!
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July 13, 2012 at 5:41 pm
While consequences are objective, that doesn’t solve the subjectivity problem because you have to decide whether the consequences are good or bad. So you are back to having to determine what is good and evil. If human opinion decides the matter, then your morality is still subjective.
If morals are not objective, there can’t be any such thing as an immoral person. If morals are just personal and cultural preferences, then saying someone who steals is immoral is like saying that someone who likes coffee flavor ice-cream is immoral. Preferences are preferences. Who is to say that one person’s preferences are any better than another person’s? It’s impossible, because there can be no such thing as “better”. Better implies an objective standard, of which there is none if you are right.
Jason
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July 14, 2012 at 12:18 am
We’re back then to the Euthyphro.One cannot overcome it with Aquinas’ begged question of His nature being good. And definitions without substantiation cannot instantiate Him, nor can faith and postulation.
Again, obviating the need for justifying the unjustifiable immorality of any scriptures brings forth general theism, which lacks any substantiated precepts for morality,based on simple subjectivism of whoever makes up the morality.
Now, theists do the inverse of what they claim that we rely on theistic morality for ours whenever they use reason and facts. Our discerning the consequences depends on how good our moral sense is, so that we who have a more refined one can without any writers making up what they allege that God commands. In the hands of Lord Russell and Michael Ruse, simple subjectivism is moral whilst in the hands of Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin and Luther, it is ever dangerous to humanity! We have outgrown the first two’s love of the pyre,Calvin’s original sin and the the Judeophobia of Luther: each who had he the power would have scorched all Europe. This is valid name-calling but no ad hominem as one can still encourage others to read what those four authoritarians have to say! Yes, we naturalists can encourage others to do that and read the Tanakh and the Christian Testament to realize how egregious their morality is!
Telepathic God communicates with a forked tongue His simple subjectivism – the thousands of sects.
Wide-reflective subjectivism as part of objective morality or on its own means that people use their considered judgments to overcome their tastes and whims.I have an aversion to some tattoos-my tastes- but my considered judgment warns me not to judge people therewith!
What then is His morality as His telepathy bequeaths that forked tongue?
So, Jason, theists have it thus inverted as His is whatever any theist says it is and thereby contradicts other theists as that telepathic, forked tongue perforce causes people to do.
His nature and his forked tongue just don’t cut it!And that nature,besides being a begged question, invites the same objection as the original one!
Yes, had we evolved differently, our moral sense would indeed be different, and thus theists would pose here the Euthyphro-like query: is morality objective,because if it depends on how our moral sense is, then were it different, how then would it be objective? But no,because we only have this one kind of moral sense. Some have a good refined one whilst other have a poorer one and still others have no moral sense. The considered moral override depends on that moral sense.
How refined is any theistic ethic depends on individuals moral sense, so that we all depend on how refined each of our moral senses tell us what is good and bad. We all thus face the same moral inquiry: how refined are our individual moral senses?
The more refined discern that the societal condemnation of bi- and homosexuality rests on mere tastes- the lack of a decent moral sense!
How then can theists practice a decent morality without using the presumption of humanism that what is good for sentient beings derives from those consequences, and deniers of consequences affirm it when they find egregious consequences to it! That is a real self-refutation whilst Plantinga’s argument from reason fails as one.
Humanism is a realist theory as David O. Brink delineates realism.
As my analysis throws theists off balance, they have to carefully read and reread it, so as not to acquire misunderstandings thereof.
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July 14, 2012 at 12:43 am
Griggs, you said, “We’re back then to the Euthyphro.One cannot overcome it with Aquinas’ begged question of His nature being good.” Not so. Even if you disagree that God’s nature is good, or that Christians don’t have good reason for thinking that God actually is the good, the fact still remains that the mere logical possibility of such shows that the Euthyphro dilemma is a false dilemma. If there are other options than the two set out in the dilemma, then it is a false one. So you can’t act as if the Euthyphro dilemma carries any logical weight against theism since whether we’re right or wrong, we’ve already shown that the dilemma is wrong. There are other possibilities.
Jason
Jason
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July 14, 2012 at 1:04 am
That logical possibility itself begs the question! Admit then that the Euthyphro wins and that theistic morality lacks a compass!
I detail why that morality fails, so theists perforce have to overcome my objections instead of just posing logical possibilities. Oh, what logical possibility anyway as that objection bespeaks the argument from ignorance,so favored by theists. Without an empirical component logical possibilities are are non-germane.
Again, how then do theists rise above their simple subjectivism that I detail? Humanists led the way for better morals whilst theistic simple subjectivism held onto slavery,misogyny and other evils that we humanists got them to override with considered judgment! Why,even Quakers had to override their fondness for slavery to become anti-slavery! Christians had to read onto their Scriptures the considered judgment No, those Scriptures don’t enshrine liberty but instead authoritarianism as Paul delineates matters!
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July 23, 2012 at 11:25 am
No, it doesn’t beg the question. It shows that the Euthyphro dilemma (ED) is a false dilemma because there are more than just two options for understanding God’s relationship to morality. It could be that God doesn’t even exist, and yet the ED would still be wrong.
This is basic philosophy. If you say there are only two possible options, but there is in fact another option, then it is false to say there are only two options. The third option does not have to even be true. It just has to be logically possible. And clearly, it is logically possible that if God existed, that the Good could be identical to His nature, which splits the horns of the ED.
Jason
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