Project Reason is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. The foundation draws on the talents of prominent and creative thinkers in a wide range of disciplines to encourage critical thinking and erode the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world.
DENNIS: Looks like a mosquito in ultraviolet light.
Took me a few seconds to fiigure out what you meant by this. I assume you are referring to my new avatar? I liked it because it was aesthetically pleasing and vaguely religious. Of course, that was before your mosquito comment. Now….thanks to you…I can’t see it in the same way.
ASD: You’re posed like you’re jumping out of a cake.
You know..now that you mention it…it does resemble my previous avatar…the one in which I’m standing in the midst of roses, arms outstretched.
And both are vaguely spiritual, are they not? Purple, dove….or is it an angel?....maybe even a flourishy crucifix. It speaks of rebirth. Yes, I like this avatar. I think it will slightly irritate everyone because it is woo-ish,, but they won’t be able to complain because it is ambiguous.
But, thanks to Dennis, I can’t erase the utlra-violet mosquito from my mind. I mean, he could have said a hummingbird, but. noooooo.
Well, I have to say I wasn’t impressed by Harris’s performance. He seems to have prepared for a different debate than the one he was supposed to have, namely, “Is Good From God?”
WLC, on the other hand, I thought was pretty good. He laid out his case clearly and stayed on point: If God exists, then He provides a foundation for objective morality; and if God doesn’t exist, then there is no foundation for objective morality.
Harris just kept on returning to the same old arguments about religion not providing a foundation for objective morality because God doesn’t exist. Even though WLC stated up front he was arguing that if God exists, then He provides a foundation for objective morality. I didn’t think Harris ever really mounted much of a defense to WLC’s claim that if God doesn’t exist, then there is no foundation for objective morality.
If nothing else, this debate should put to rest the argument that Harris, in TML, isn’t really arguing for the existence of objective morality, but instead is arguing that science should be used to help us live up to our subjective human values.
I didn’t see the debate (I only saw the very beginning- a little bit of Craig’s opening remarks) so I can’t comment on that. But I think Harris argued it well in TML.
Craig’s premise doesn’t hold up so I don’t know he was pretty good. Harris is right, there is no God so God can’t be the basis for objective morality, the basis has to stem from the evolutionary function of the brain to even consider that there is one, whatever the source is thought to be. But that doesn’t support that without God, there is no objective morality. Many of us know now that it is not God but a function of the brain, thus, the source of its foundation. Also, Craig describes objective morality in terms of good and evil which is subjective, rather than in terms of right and wrong. The only reason we make these distinctions is because the human brain functions that way. Right and wrong must be relative to survival and well-being because the human experience is motivated to that end. That’s not to say that wrong is not exercised for various reasons, including pathologies. Our notion of particular behaviors as new ones arise relative to a changing envioronment may be considered by some as good and evil, but there is no God there to set the law and set us straight about it, and we can clearly demonstrate that God is fallible by getting it wrong.
To me, speaking of “foundation” of moral behavior means an underlying basis for it, basic rudimentary human drives built into our biologies, not the ever-changing responses to the changing environment after we’ve “flown the coop” as Harris says. These choices are best guided by scientific data relative to the underlying motivational drives. If you want and need love as a foundational condition of well-being, is it right or wrong to pummel to death the objective source of your well-being in order to obtain it from them? Question? Issue? If you need food, is it right or wrong to purposely destroy all available food sources? You certainly have the option. A gnu might think you’re crazy though, or one gnu to another, if they don’t know they’re doing it to themselves. Their function and motivation, not only individually but as a group/herd, is to graze, eat, survive and experience well-being as best they can be attracted to it and avoid that which interferes with it. So, their biologies (and ours) are evolved to function.
As an underlying foundation of human moral behavior, I doubt that most people will consider the holocaust to be morally good as a matter of biology, they may not even know why, but they won’t feel that way. Would they still feel that way on their own without the psycho-social influences that might form those thoughts and behaviors? Were they born with them? Did God instill it? If they do feel it is good, science has the potential to explain the reasons why. Indeed, part of the process is misinformation that perceptually dehumanizes human beings, not actually as a matter of reality. Had it been a matter of evolutionary function, we wouldn’t be here trying to prosper and experience well-being. So the next time you wake up in the morning, ask yourself if it’s subjective that you don’t have a strong desire to torture and kill your wife and children, or whether it’s objective that you’re concerned with their and your well-being. Because someone may have that desire and actually does it, doesn’t make both subjective.
Plato realises that all theories propounded by Cephalus, Thrasymachus and Glaucon, contained one common element. That one common element was that all the them treated justice as something external “an accomplishment, an importation, or a convention, they have, none of them carried it into the soul or considered it in the place of its habitation.” Plato prove that justice does not depend upon a chance, convention or upon external force. It is the right condition of the human soul by the very nature of man when seen in the fullness of his environment. It is in this way that Plato condemned the position taken by Glaucon that justice is something which is external. According to Plato, it is internal as it resides in the human soul. “It is now regarded as an inward grace and its understanding is shown to involve a study of the inner man.” It is, therefore, natural and not artificial. It is therefore, not born of fear of the weak but of the longing of the human soul to do a duty according to its nature.
Morality is not reducible to justice, and justice is impossible to discern in the absence of injustice. There simply is no way to talk about morality without inserting humanity (a.k.a. subjectivity).
Plato realises that all theories propounded by Cephalus, Thrasymachus and Glaucon, contained one common element. That one common element was that all the them treated justice as something external “an accomplishment, an importation, or a convention, they have, none of them carried it into the soul or considered it in the place of its habitation.” Plato prove that justice does not depend upon a chance, convention or upon external force. It is the right condition of the human soul by the very nature of man when seen in the fullness of his environment. It is in this way that Plato condemned the position taken by Glaucon that justice is something which is external. According to Plato, it is internal as it resides in the human soul. “It is now regarded as an inward grace and its understanding is shown to involve a study of the inner man.” It is, therefore, natural and not artificial. It is therefore, not born of fear of the weak but of the longing of the human soul to do a duty according to its nature.
Morality is not reducible to justice, and justice is impossible to discern in the absence of injustice. There simply is no way to talk about morality without inserting humanity (a.k.a. subjectivity).
Objective morality or justice is an expression of universal laws not only on earth but in the universe itself. That is why it is soul knowledge. The East knows it as karma. Life in the universe involves and evolves as expressions of these laws.
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil for man is conscious awareness of the attractions of Man’s involution and evolutiion. “Good” is the direction of conscious evolution and “evil” is the involution of the flow of forces deeper into creation and the loss of the human potential for consciousness. The results are objective justice.
Plato realises that all theories propounded by Cephalus, Thrasymachus and Glaucon, contained one common element. That one common element was that all the them treated justice as something external “an accomplishment, an importation, or a convention, they have, none of them carried it into the soul or considered it in the place of its habitation.” Plato prove that justice does not depend upon a chance, convention or upon external force. It is the right condition of the human soul by the very nature of man when seen in the fullness of his environment. It is in this way that Plato condemned the position taken by Glaucon that justice is something which is external. According to Plato, it is internal as it resides in the human soul. “It is now regarded as an inward grace and its understanding is shown to involve a study of the inner man.” It is, therefore, natural and not artificial. It is therefore, not born of fear of the weak but of the longing of the human soul to do a duty according to its nature.
Morality is not reducible to justice, and justice is impossible to discern in the absence of injustice. There simply is no way to talk about morality without inserting humanity (a.k.a. subjectivity).
Objective morality or justice is an expression of universal laws not only on earth but in the universe itself. That is why it is soul knowledge. The East knows it as karma. Life in the universe involves and evolves as expressions of these laws.
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil for man is conscious awareness of the attractions of Man’s involution and evolutiion. “Good” is the direction of conscious evolution and “evil” is the involution of the flow of forces deeper into creation and the loss of the human potential for consciousness. The results are objective justice.
Much about nothing. If I could find this tree, I would chop it down as the source of endless inane babble and useless pontificating about objective morality.
Plato realises that all theories propounded by Cephalus, Thrasymachus and Glaucon, contained one common element. That one common element was that all the them treated justice as something external “an accomplishment, an importation, or a convention, they have, none of them carried it into the soul or considered it in the place of its habitation.” Plato prove that justice does not depend upon a chance, convention or upon external force. It is the right condition of the human soul by the very nature of man when seen in the fullness of his environment. It is in this way that Plato condemned the position taken by Glaucon that justice is something which is external. According to Plato, it is internal as it resides in the human soul. “It is now regarded as an inward grace and its understanding is shown to involve a study of the inner man.” It is, therefore, natural and not artificial. It is therefore, not born of fear of the weak but of the longing of the human soul to do a duty according to its nature.
Morality is not reducible to justice, and justice is impossible to discern in the absence of injustice. There simply is no way to talk about morality without inserting humanity (a.k.a. subjectivity).
Objective morality or justice is an expression of universal laws not only on earth but in the universe itself. That is why it is soul knowledge. The East knows it as karma. Life in the universe involves and evolves as expressions of these laws.
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil for man is conscious awareness of the attractions of Man’s involution and evolutiion. “Good” is the direction of conscious evolution and “evil” is the involution of the flow of forces deeper into creation and the loss of the human potential for consciousness. The results are objective justice.
Much about nothing. If I could find this tree, I would chop it down as the source of endless inane babble and useless pontificating about objective morality.
Our justice system attempts to be objective and largely unempathetic in its assessments. What empathy is applied, it is assigned by attempting to use objective standards of assessment. The rub is that its systematic purpose is purely to promote, protect, and punish those in opposition of, pro-social behavior. However, society is man’s invention based off largely subjective viewpoints. Some argue that procreation is a fundamental desire and protection of that spawned the morality governing justice. ( and then there are the comandments and such yada yada) Who knows? But the justice system is not the root of anything; it’s simply a widely accepted product of society.
Justice itself (not the justice system) is a desire. Most, if not all desires are subjective.
The universe itself is uncaring. Karma Pertains to harmony. The universe responds to laws of physics such as cause and effect, but can give two shits about whether humans interact harmoniously with regard to one another or it.
This is probably the most meaningless phrase I’ve ever read here. How anyone can use the word ‘knowledge’ and link it to ‘a priori’ and ‘soul’ is beyond me. Nick_A will no doubt say that is because I am spiritually limited and blind to some deeper font of knowledge that does not depend on science and rationality. And I will have no idea what the fuck he is talking about. /Shrug/ He’ll need to do much better than a priori soul knowledge to get any traction with non-theist humanists.
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Rob) - 17 April 2012 09:51 AM
Nick_A: ..a priori soul knowledge
This is probably the most meaningless phrase I’ve ever read here. How anyone can use the word ‘knowledge’ and link it to ‘a priori’ and ‘soul’ is beyond me. Nick_A will no doubt say that is because I am spiritually limited and blind to some deeper font of knowledge that does not depend on science and rationality. And I will have no idea what the fuck he is talking about. /Shrug/ He’ll need to do much better than a priori soul knowledge to get any traction with non-theist humanists.
And yet many people consider atheism to be arrogance? Go figure.
I hope Nick_A will not think that my comments are any sort of assault against him personally. He comes across as a nice sort of searching ‘soul’. I would just like to see him think more honestly about what it is he is searching for and about the ways such searchers can deceive themselves into thinking that they have found it. Even when we let go of gods it can be hard to admit that this is it and that we are it. (Rob dips hat to Answerer) We can dump the religious dogma and go all mystical but it’s just more of the same crap really.
Mysticism is a cop-out. And it annoys me to see intelligent people trying to justify it and preaching their particular brand of it to others. It’s just a way of not letting go of supernaturalism and trying to convince themselves that they are right by getting affirmation from the similarly minded. It’s self-deception.
There may well be something out there, beyond, beneath or above the natural world. There may well be a magic teapot orbiting Mars. But the fact is there is simply no evidence for either proposition. I have some sympathy for people such as Nick_A, Saralynn, Burt… who hanker after ‘more’ but when they try to justify their hankering with pseudoscience and try to get affirmation from non-theist humanists in here they just make fools of themselves. It’s silly and they shouldn’t do it. If they must go on about it they should go to theist or mystical forums where such nonsense is entertained and enjoyed by the similarly deluded.
Sorry, guys. But I must call it as I see it. This is Project Reason and not Project Pleasin’.
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Rob) - 17 April 2012 10:53 AM
If they must go on about it they should go to theist or mystical forums where such nonsense is entertained and enjoyed by the similarly deluded.
The mods/admins have the power (if not the authority and the right) to boot folks off the forum. If Project Reason is intended only for non-theists/non-mystics, then they should exercise this power. However, it has been my understanding that “reason” is not content specific. It relates to a method of thinking, and allows plenty of room for disagreement, even about the nature of reality. There is even room for disagreement about what evidence and proof are. I think that is one reason why non-atheists have been allowed to post here. While pure preaching and authoritarian assertions are not allowed (not being based on reason), disagreements and differing views of reality have historically been tolerated. But, this can change, as well, I suppose.
I have no disagreement with any of that, Bruce. People should be able to post just about anything here. Either you misunderstood or I did not make myself plain. Let me try again. If people like Nick_A, who want to advance mysticism, cannot stand criticism of what they say here they should go elsewhere. That is all I meant. It’s up to them. I said what I said in the context of not wanting Nick_A (or the other mystics here) to think I was attacking them personally. It is what I see as their silly notions that I want to confront them with. You are a theist of the non-malign variety. No problem with that at all. You do not try to ‘prove’ your theism with science or pseudo-science because you know it is impossible to do so. Let the mystics admit as much. Or not. But if they do not then they must expect criticism from non-theist humanists. That said, no one is suggesting that they should not be welcomed here.
