How Do You Feel About the Moral Argument?

Does Richard Dawkins views have to affect everything? He's not even the best atheist out there.

Morality is the last bastion of a coward.

What exactly do you mean by this?

Don't think it's very strong, since morality isn't objective.

@nick_hero22: It's a line from the movie Ravenous, it just something someone evil would say to try to get you to do something immoral.

Why?

Why what?

Okay.......

Why do you believe that morality isn't objective? On theism I happen to believe that morality is subjective which would seem odd to most people since theist claim that God provides the foundation for morality, but this point-of-view is full of conceptual issues. Now, on naturalism I believe that morality is objective.

@nick_hero22: Because, morality is a man-made concept that is formed by the society you live in; it is subjective. There is nothing called morality in nature. You cannot observe morality or test it in a lab. There is no absolute morality.

Well, let me challenge you a little here. If someone were to steal some money from you, you would find that action wrong.....correct?

Its a not a very strong argument, William Craig's arguments are designed to make certain people who believe that its more reasonable to believe in God feel great and validated that such strong arguments exist but once you start to actually delve into his definitions, the argument starts falling apart. Except you do have to know a bit about claims and how and why arguments are strong or weak so on. Objective morality can exist, it depends on how one defines it, Sam Harris idea of objective morality for example is much different to William Lane Craig's.

@nick_hero22: It really depends on the context. To me, a person who stole money from me for a quick buck is completely different than a person who stole money from me to put food on the table.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55h1FO8V_3w

I don't really get the question.

@mandarinestro said:

William Lane Craig likes baiting Dawkings, because whilst Dawkins isn't the best at constructing strong arguments or critiquing or deconstructing arguments, he is quite well known and famous and so would provide a great platform for someone like Craig to speak from. There are many other figures who criticize Craig's arguments including some religious, but Craig generally prefers bigger crowds/bigger fish.

@hayden86: There is a difference between not understanding something and wishing to clarify with a person who said something to get them to expose more of their reasoning behind something. I am assuming that in this instance its the latter for example, but I could be wrong. Not sure why connecting dots needs to come into the picture.

SO DO YOU UNDERSTAND NOW HUH? DO YOU GET IT? (<-- thats a joke by the way heh heh)

Let's say that the reason for stealing is unknown. Do you believe that it is a bad thing?

@nick_hero22: From my current standpoint yes, but my opinion could entirely change if I ended up knowing the context behind why they stole from me; it could also end up staying the same.

Agreed on the surface it seems like a good argument, but once you start looking at it closely then it fails apart very easily. The Euthyphro Dilemma makes this plainly obvious when William Lane Craig has to craft his third "option" to avoid the dilemma which exposes the poverty of a theistic account of morality.

Let me craft a moral framework for you that provides an objective account of morality, and tell me what you think. Are you down?

@sc: My comment was made in reply to the "okay..." reply that was made at me. I was attempting to anger and hopefully hook nick hero in a mindless reply war. Once i read over my response i deleted it seeing that i was not on my game tonight.

Are the dots connected ?

@hayden86: Oh heh heh alright, I was trying to the opposite in case there was a misunderstanding but gotcha.

Depends what game is being played, Connect Four, Twister, Super Mario 64. 0_0.

@nick_hero22: Feel free. It's like 3 AM here, so I may go to sleep soon. I'm almost positive it won't change my standpoint, though. Perspective and views are different between people, and my view of the situation may be very different from another persons' view.

@sc: dots in Mario ? ...oh yeah the world map right ?

@beaconofstrength:

Part 1: Moral Ontology (What is the grounding for morality)

There are certain facts about the natural world that are necessarily true such as 2+2=4 or a square has four sides because of certain physical features of our universe. What this has to do with morality is that we can ground it on propositions that are necessarily true because of how the world is, so in order to illustrate this point a little better let's think about humans. Humans can be loosely defined as biological creatures that have needs and desires that are necessarily in order for them to thrive and the cognitive faculties to recognize the states they are in and how that affects their needs and desires. With this being said, certain facts can be drawn from this phenomena such as the proposition that......."Freedom and personal autonomy are good for humans" since it allows them to fulfill their needs and desires or to even have those needs or desires. I'm not talking about "good" in a subjective sense, but instead a universal sense that would be applicable to allow organisms who share those characteristics. What I mean by this is that any person who has needs and desires and is capable of recognizing those needs and desires would need to have freedom and personal autonomy to express those needs and desires which is a good think because it allows an individual to thrive, and this fact would be true for all organism who meet those two criterion I have listed. This provides us with a grounding for moral facts.

Part 2: Moral Epistemology (How can we recognize morality)

This is quite easy to answer once we have a grounding for morality since the only think we have to do is personally reflection on the nature of certain actions and how they affect one's being (freedom and personal autonomy) to determine whether or not an action is moral or immoral. Stabbing someone because I was bored would be a bad thing because I'm violating there personal autonomy which we can define as the control one has over there own body and well-being, and this fact can be known by simply reflecting on one's own personal autonomy in respective to the action that being committed upon someone else.

Part 3: Moral Obligation (Why should I act moral)

I'm a Contractarian which means that I believe that my moral obligations comes from we wanting to preserve my own self-interest (needs and desires) by helping preserve the self-interest of others in return for them helping me preserve my own self-interest through rules like "No murdering" or "No stealing" because it would be in all of our best interest in the name of self-interest that these actions don't intervene in our ability to express our needs and desires.

Dawkins destroys.

I would agree that without some supernatural entity/entities, morals can be completely subjective.

If we define morally good behavior as such which is beneficial for the wellbeing of conscious creatures, then it seems to me we indeed can objectively value some actions to be morally better than others. Obviously we will not always get the right answers, we might never get the best possible answers, but we should be able to objectively determine how killing bunch of kids because you felt like it is not an action which maximizes the wellbeing.

@nick_hero22: Poor

@mr_clockwork91: Obviously if someone was trying to harm you or kill you then self-defense is permissible in order to maintain your autonomy, but when your autonomy or freedom isn't threaten then you have no justification for stabbing someone.

@nick_hero22: That's not the question I asked, let me clarify. What if the person you stabbed was "evil or bad" was merely out of boredom? Would that be wrong knowing that other person was bad? Would Dexter be good or bad in your view of Philosophy?

Agreed, you summed it up better than I could have SC. Good job!

I'll only believe in a god if I die and I'm standing in front of him

I feel that here in the video Craig really doesn't make anything worth arguing.

If you need heaven to tell right from wrong then you're not a good man.

bump

i grew up in a place where "eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and everything becomes to ruin" is a rule so it is safe to say the morality is based on the society around you.

Do you believe that some things are inherently wrong no matter what people say like rape and murder? Those aren't really moral rules, but a system of punishments for those who break the rules.

there are no morally wrong and right things on where i group, just people dictationg what is right or wrong and who has the power to enforce. that said, i grew my own morality to it.

So if you came across a young child being rape you wouldn't see anything fundamental wrong? I believe that we can make a strong argument for the existent of objective moral values on the basis of the bio-psychological responses we have such as sadness, anger, regretful, and fear when we see people being harmed. The fact that when we use others harmed or killed we question our own security and well-being, if there was no fundamental rights and wrongs this would be sheer illusory of the human psyche.

it's funny that the film Ravenous was used, since it promised a Wendigo and only delivered a crazy idiot munching on people too dumb to outwit said idiot.

hardly a film one would want a self-styled intellectual giant, or any of his supporters, to use, even in a comedic fashion.

@nick_hero22: no for that matter. i grew up to such horrid scenarios and i mostly don't bat an eyelash to it. only when i left that place is where my morality grew better.