memes and a breather

This is meant to be a "light" post - a break from the fairly serious and lengthy discussions instigated by the previous two.

First, a personal note: the last couple of posts led to discussions which were strangely intense for me, so I have taken a break from blogging the last few days.

After a lifetime of searching and countless hours in and out of the classroom studying philosophy and religion, I thought myself capable of a little more detachment than I demonstrated in the last thread. I've become acutely conscious of some insecurities I have regarding my atheism. Now that I have learned a lesson in self-control, I am eager to continue the discourse and work through these things. I think and hope that others have also found the conversation fruitful, in different ways.

I would like to thank everyone for keeping the discussion polite and reasoned and, more importantly, for showing concern for each other. I am proud to find myself among upstanding people and I'm sure we will have more to talk about soon. There were a lot of subjects raised, and I have yet to decide how best to follow up.

In the meantime - so as not to break from the subject of religion, but not to get too entrenched in formal argumentation just now, either - I want opinions on a new belief system I discovered on the web today called The Church of Virus.

This belief system is self-described as an "atheistic religion," which to me sounds like a self-contradiction. They believe in memetics* (although I don't know whether they represent it accurately), and that their belief system leads to a meaningful life and immortality, among other things.

I am extremely skeptical of memetics, and I am even more skeptical of this new religion. What do you guys think?

* Memetics is the study of memes and their social effects. A meme is a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. Memes purportedly "compete" for survival in the environment of minds and cultures just as organisms "compete" for survival in the physical environment of the world.

Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Argument

I promised to do a post on the Euthyphro Argument, and here it is. I know it's been a long time coming. I had to postpone it a little bit on account of a Major Event (ME). I will post about ME soon. As usual, all polite, thoughtful comments are welcome. Enjoy!

Portions of the material I am using here are taken from my notes from a lecture given in 2002 by Dr. Keith Allen Korcz at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, for a philosophy course entitled 'Contemporary Moral Dilemmas.' Korcz has a talent for presenting arguments so simply, even I can understand them. This argument is widely known to theologians and philosophers of religion. You read the argument and judge whether it makes sense to you.

Divine Command Theory, or DC, is one way to see a relationship between ethics and religion. There are many varieties of DC, which claims that:

1. What makes an action morally right, wrong, or neutral is God's command; and
2. In order to determine what is right/wrong/neutral, we must determine what it is that God has commanded.

Different versions of DC can be formulated by substituting different definitions of God and selecting different means by which God makes commands known. According to classical theism, God is a supreme being who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibeneficent; and God's commands are revealed through select spokespersons and writings.

Notice that in order to determine what is right, wrong, or neutral, we must determine what God has commanded.

Notice also that any DC assumes the existence of God. This is not an argument about the existence of God, but about a relationship that is said to exist between God and morality.

Keeping that in mind, an argument for claim 1 above is:

3. God exists
4. If God exists, then he created morality.
5. If God created morality, then God's commands made actions morally right, wrong, or neutral.
6. Conclusion: God's commands made actions morally right, wrong, or neutral.

If we assume that 3, 4, and 5 are true, then 6 must be true. 3, although it is the subject of controversy, is assumed for the sake of the argument. 5 seems uncontroversial. It's not so clear that 4 is true. If 4 should turn out to be false, then the argument would be unsound.

The Euthyphro argument is aimed at premise 4.

THE EUTHYPHRO ARGUMENT: What does it mean to say that God's commands are good?

The Euthyphro argument is named after Plato's Euthyphro, in which Socrates poses the question, "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved?" (10a). The Euthyphro Argument rests on a modernized version of the same question: "Does God command certain actions because he knows what makes actions morally right, wrong, or neutral; or, are actions morally right, wrong, or neutral because God commands them?

If the former case is correct, and God knows/sees/understands that certain actions have moral status (examples - killing is bad, stealing is bad, giving to worthwhile charities is good) then those acts have that moral status regardless of what God commands. Then divine command theory would be wrong because morality would not depend on God's commands.

If the latter case is correct, and God creates morality by commanding things, then anything he could command would be as good as anything else. There would be no moral reason to command one thing rather than another; morality would be arbitrary.

The problem for proponents of DC is that morality does not seem to be arbitrary. If actions were morally good because God commanded them, then God could have commanded that we hate our neighbor, and that we kill innocent people; and those actions would then be morally obligatory. But it seems as though killing innocent people would be wrong, even if God commanded it.

Moreover, it would trivialize the idea of God's goodness. Believers want to say that God's goodness is part of what makes God worthy of worship. If actions are good by virtue of God's will, then "God wills what is good" is equivalent to "God wills what God wills," and the latter statement doesn't seem to make God worthy of worship.

When I saw this argument for the first time as a sophomore in college, I was stunned. I had been firmly of the belief that morality did depend on God's commands! Eventually I accepted the point of the argument.

minority me

Found some cartoons today:

(That's the problem, sir ...)

(I want to join this guy's church!)



This last cartoon offends me.

Most of my life I have not been an atheist.

Although I no longer hold any scripture divinely inspired, my love for many writings remains undiminished. I recognize that holy scriptures represent some of the best and noblest characteristics possessed by human beings. Here is an excerpt from Ecclesiastes, chapter nine, which I find to be particularly wise and poignant.

For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope,
for a living dog is better than a dead lion.

For the living know they shall die,
but the dead know not any thing,
neither have they any more a reward,
for the memory of them is forgotten.
Also their love,
and their hatred,
and their envy,
is now perished;
neither have they any more a portion for ever
in any thing that is done under the sun.

Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy,
and drink thy wine with a merry heart;
for God now accepteth thy works.
Let thy garments be always white,
and let thy head lack no ointment,
Live joyfully with the wife whom whou lovest
all the days of the life of thy vanity,
which he hath given thee under the sun,
all the days of thy vanity;
for that is thy portion of this life,
and in thy labour
which thou takest under the sun.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,
do it with thy might;
for there is no work, nor device,
nor knowledge, nor wisdom,
in the grave, whither thou goest.

I returned, and saw under the sun
that the race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong,
neither yet bread to the wise,
nor yet riches to men of understanding,
not yet favour to men of skill;
but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Not the best translation, I'm sure, but there's none so poetic as the King James.

This passage is one of many that are particularly prescious to me. Were I to live a million years, I would never want to destroy the Bible (or any other scripture).

We have a winner!

The blog naming competition is over.

"Snaarsissism" wins! (Congratulations, Ron. Your prize is getting to see the title you invented on the one and only genuine snaars site.)

Thank you everyone for your imaginative responses.

$6 million ... er ... $65 thousand man

We can rebuild him. We have the technology.
We have the capability to make the world's first Bionic man.
Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before.
Better . . . stronger . . . faster.

Look out, Lee Majors!