What delightful hosts they are--Love and Laughter!
Lingeringly I turn away at this late hour, yet glad
They have not withheld from me their high hospitality.
So at the door I pause to press their hands just once more
And say, "So fine a time! Thank you both . . . and goodbye."
- Anonymous
Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Epitaph
I think I'd like the following to be read at my funeral (not that I'm expecting it anytime soon):
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Creation/Evolution controversy explained
It's SO simple, really. Ken Ham, the protuberant creationist apologist, has a neatly packaged Answer-In-Genesis to the question of why Evolutionists "refuse" to believe.
Be you creationist or evolutionist, you may be surprised to find out that the controversy is not about the actual evidence for or against your position. No, we can never look to the evidence to decide the matter. The key, you see, is in the interpretation of the evidence, which is naturally based on our presuppositions (or axioms, which, Mr. Ham explains, are the same thing.)
One interpretation might seem to fit the evidence better, warns Ken, if we have not grasped the notion that what are at issue are the presuppositions which underlie.
You see, it's like this: no one really "knows" if we were created or evolved. Because no one was there to witness how we came to be. Because "We all exist in the present—and the facts all exist in the present."
If there was a witness, then someone was already living. So, being alive, they can't have witnessed the creation of life. Therefore, no one witnessed the creation of life.
No one, that is, except God (good thing HE's not alive, right?)!
Until we have a time machine, we'll never know how it really happened.
Luckily, our Christian brethren actually do have a time machine, in the form of the Bible. Hooray!
If we will only presuppose (and what right-thinker wouldn't?) that the Bible is the revealed Word of our Lord, then all the evidence will fall naturally into place. What a relief!
Ken Ham says he's glad he learned this distinction between facts and presuppositions, because then he was able to inoculate his students against the factual interpretations of other (evolutionist) teachers. Then the shoe was on the other foot for a change!
Despite God's every effort to be fair and give us all an even shake, however, some folks just won't believe, for their own indiscoverable, spiritually corrupt and immoral reasons. As long as they remain obstinate, nothing can prevent them from forming their own radicallly dangerous scientific interpretations of the evidence.
Be you creationist or evolutionist, you may be surprised to find out that the controversy is not about the actual evidence for or against your position. No, we can never look to the evidence to decide the matter. The key, you see, is in the interpretation of the evidence, which is naturally based on our presuppositions (or axioms, which, Mr. Ham explains, are the same thing.)
One interpretation might seem to fit the evidence better, warns Ken, if we have not grasped the notion that what are at issue are the presuppositions which underlie.
You see, it's like this: no one really "knows" if we were created or evolved. Because no one was there to witness how we came to be. Because "We all exist in the present—and the facts all exist in the present."
If there was a witness, then someone was already living. So, being alive, they can't have witnessed the creation of life. Therefore, no one witnessed the creation of life.
No one, that is, except God (good thing HE's not alive, right?)!
Until we have a time machine, we'll never know how it really happened.
Luckily, our Christian brethren actually do have a time machine, in the form of the Bible. Hooray!
If we will only presuppose (and what right-thinker wouldn't?) that the Bible is the revealed Word of our Lord, then all the evidence will fall naturally into place. What a relief!
Ken Ham says he's glad he learned this distinction between facts and presuppositions, because then he was able to inoculate his students against the factual interpretations of other (evolutionist) teachers. Then the shoe was on the other foot for a change!
Despite God's every effort to be fair and give us all an even shake, however, some folks just won't believe, for their own indiscoverable, spiritually corrupt and immoral reasons. As long as they remain obstinate, nothing can prevent them from forming their own radicallly dangerous scientific interpretations of the evidence.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Snaars Times
Here's a brief update for my online friends. Sorry I haven't been in touch the last few months. I've been working two jobs. When I am home I spend a lot of time with the snaars spouse and snaars kids.
It's hard to believe Saadia turned one year old last month - but it's true. Simcha is in kindergarten and Havilah is in the second grade. They are, each of them, fantastic kids. Every day there's something I want to write about. They provide me with enough material that I could write a full-length post every day, if I had the time and energy.
Yesterday Havilah told me she loves science, but she doesn't like math, and she wants to be a figure skater when she grows up. Lately, her favorite game to play as a family has been "20 questions."
Today I watched from our apartment balcony as Simcha nervously crossed the street all by herself on her way to the neighborhood playground. While Simcha participates in "20 questions," she much prefers "I spy with my little eye," which is basically the same, only easier.
Saadia has a glowing personality, and is working hard at breaking in tooth number eight and tooth number nine. While I was comfortably seated on the balcony watching Havilah and Simcha in the playground across the street, Saadia discovered the unique and satisfying sound an orange makes when it is dropped from the third story to the concrete below.
I would like to draw your attention to the new scarlet letter "A" in the sidebar. This is the official symbol of Richard Dawkins's atheist OUT Campaign. Since I came out as an atheist about two years ago, and because this very website was instrumental in that regard, I felt it was appropriate to add the A here.
This blog's address has been added to the OUT Campaign's blogroll, but it took some doing. Initially, the OUT Campaign's site administrator thought that my site had been hacked by Christians! I thought: "Oh my, that administrator didn't take much time to read it, did he?" I supposed that my spiritualized theme had caused confusion! In fact, there was a typo in my submission. The administrator was looking at snaars.blogpot.com. (Blogpot, you see?)
Anyway, it's all fixed now. I plan to peruse some of the other sites on the blogroll, maybe make some more friends.
Perhaps I'll provide some details on my employment situation next time.
It's hard to believe Saadia turned one year old last month - but it's true. Simcha is in kindergarten and Havilah is in the second grade. They are, each of them, fantastic kids. Every day there's something I want to write about. They provide me with enough material that I could write a full-length post every day, if I had the time and energy.
Yesterday Havilah told me she loves science, but she doesn't like math, and she wants to be a figure skater when she grows up. Lately, her favorite game to play as a family has been "20 questions."
Today I watched from our apartment balcony as Simcha nervously crossed the street all by herself on her way to the neighborhood playground. While Simcha participates in "20 questions," she much prefers "I spy with my little eye," which is basically the same, only easier.
Saadia has a glowing personality, and is working hard at breaking in tooth number eight and tooth number nine. While I was comfortably seated on the balcony watching Havilah and Simcha in the playground across the street, Saadia discovered the unique and satisfying sound an orange makes when it is dropped from the third story to the concrete below.
I would like to draw your attention to the new scarlet letter "A" in the sidebar. This is the official symbol of Richard Dawkins's atheist OUT Campaign. Since I came out as an atheist about two years ago, and because this very website was instrumental in that regard, I felt it was appropriate to add the A here.
This blog's address has been added to the OUT Campaign's blogroll, but it took some doing. Initially, the OUT Campaign's site administrator thought that my site had been hacked by Christians! I thought: "Oh my, that administrator didn't take much time to read it, did he?" I supposed that my spiritualized theme had caused confusion! In fact, there was a typo in my submission. The administrator was looking at snaars.blogpot.com. (Blogpot, you see?)
Anyway, it's all fixed now. I plan to peruse some of the other sites on the blogroll, maybe make some more friends.
Perhaps I'll provide some details on my employment situation next time.
Monday, August 08, 2005
My atheist philosophy overview
This is a continuation of a conversation begun on Mayfly's blog. Click here. Mayfly began by asking if there was something inherent about matter that drives it toward life and complexity.
This post has been bubbling about in my little brain for two weeks now. Tonight everything is frothing forth.
Q,
Let me preface this by saying that I respect your right to believe what you wish concerning these matters. I know firsthand how difficult and depressing it can be to have your entire world-view turned upside down. Like you, and Mayfly, and Arglor, I take no pleasure in undermining anyone's beliefs.
I do take pleasure in intelligent discussion and debate, and I think you do the same. I think we both value truth, even though we disagree about what is true. So I appreciate the courage you exibit in just listening to what I and others have to say, and I hope you realize it takes courage for me to lay bare my beliefs and have them openly criticized. I think that you, I, Arglor, Mayfly, and everyone that has taken part in this discussion has shown that courage.
In short, I think we are all commendable for trying to understand one another. I firmly believe that understanding must come before constructive dialogue.
Now, on to the substance. I think I understand where the miscommunication is this time. I will strive to make my points with concrete examples from now on, wherever I am able. And I will avoid all talk of turtles. ;-)
Q wrote: God is perfectly sufficient to explain the existence of the kind of complexity we have been discussing since Mayfly's original post.
You are quite right, God is sufficient to explain all kinds of instances of complexity. God can string nucleotides together all millenium long without batting an eyelash, more easily than I can assemble a child's bicycle. In this sense, you are absolutely correct.
Consider the implications of what are we saying, however, when we assert that because we don't know how something has happened, God must be responsible for it. No one was there to see how the amino acids and nucleotides formed. I don't know and you don't know; we don't know if God did it or not. One day we may figure it out, or we may never know. It doesn't follow from our lack of understanding that God had to have done it.
Suppose we can be sure that supernatural forces caused the amino acids and nucleotides to come together a certain way. If the transcendant realm does not usually interact with ours, then how do these forces cross over from that transcendant realm into our material realm, in order to coerce or manipulate matter into forms it can't (by hypothesis) take on in nature? We could assume these forces are from God, but how do we know? Are there many such transcendant realms, with other transcendant entities (angels or demons perhaps)? How do they exist? Of what do they consist? Does the transcendant realm follow laws, as our material realm seems to do? In the material world, we have noticed a marked correspondence between brain activity and human thought; is there some kind of activity in the transcendant realm that corresponds to the thoughts of transcendant beings? Do such beings even have thoughts?
There's no end to the questions we can ask about such a transcendant realm and the transcendant being/s that occupy it, and how they supposedly interact with us in the material realm. Following this train of thought, you can see that we have to introduce a whole new order of complexity, in the form of a transcendant realm and transcedant being/s, to explain just one perplexing instance of complexity, namely the formation of nucleotides and amino acid chains. Moreover, we have no good evidence for such a realm, other than the fact that we have an unexplained problem in evolutionary biology/chemistry.
On the other hand, we can investigate other options - matter and forces, physics and chemistry, things we do have some hope of understanding, because they are made up of much the same stuff as we are. We already have evidence, in the form of hundreds of years of scientific observation, hypotheses, repeated testing, and valid predictions, supporting our notions that they exist.
Q wrote: I'm building a list of challenges to a purely materialistic view of the universe:
(1) Where did matter/energy come from; or, if it is supposed to be eternal, how does that correspond to what we can observe about the universe?
(2) How did inanimate matter become living matter?
(3) How did human beings make the leap to consciousness?
(4) How do atheists adequately account for meaning and morality?
To your point 1: my understanding is that energy and matter are interchangeable and indestructible, the 2nd law notwithstanding. The 2nd law indicates that eventually no energy will be usable for work. It looks bleak, depressing even - but that doesn't mean it's not true. If it helps, there is hope in a theory according to which, as the universe expands, the unusable heat energy rarifies to a certain point, stretching space itself to the tearing point, which somehow causes another big bang (I don't know how it supposedly works). But even if this is true, the human race as we know it will be long gone. The way I see it, humanity is ignorant of many things and the future of the universe is uncertain. Personally, I like to think that our universe is one of many, but I don't think anyone knows.
To your point 2: Following fundamental, universal laws governing matter and energy, matter was arranged in complex forms, eventually culminating in life. We can observe the same kinds of reactions going on today, as the Urey-Miller experiment and other experiments show. We don't have to know every single detail and step in the process to come to this conclusion.
point 3 - I believe that over millions of years life evolved to the point of consciousness. I observe behavior in humans and other animals that indicates consciousness not unlike my own, and generally speaking the more sophisticated an animal's nervous system, the more conscious they seem to me. A plant is not conscious at all, a worm reacts to stimulii, a dog can be friendly or mean. I believe that consciousness is the product of complex biochemical and bioelectrical activity, and I believe that consciousness stops when that activity stops.
point 4 - I think that there is a rational basis for morality. I think morality arises as a consequence of physical, conscious, rational (or at least semi-rational) agents being in relationship and being able to affect one another. I believe morality is objective, not subjective, because moral rules are independant of what any moral agent or group of moral agents think or believe (even the postulated entity known as God). Morality is a consequence of what and who we are; it is not a decision made by us, and it does not issue from a higher power or plane of existence.
I think ethics stems from human nature, not God's nature. I cannot emphasize enough that this does not mean that morality is arbitrary or subjective. It means that morality is dictated by states-of-affairs in the real, physical world, and as such is flexible. What I mean by this, by way of example, is that killing is wrong when it's murder, but it's all right in self-defense. If we humans had natural body armor, it might be morally acceptable to go around hitting each other hard with baseball bats, but we're not, so it's not. It is a real, objective fact that all of our actions have consequences, and some of the consequences are good and some of them bad. Good is to be embraced and encouraged, and bad or evil is to be avoided and discouraged.
Even if God exists, I would believe the same things about ethics. I think God would abide by moral rules for the same reasons that we human beings should abide by them - because they are good. I believe that goodness is it's own reward, I don't believe that we should be threatened or cajoled by false promises into doing it.
Goodness is not God. Goodness is an abstraction, no matter how it exists, not a person. Good is good because it is beneficial to someone. Evil is evil because it harms someone, not because God arbitrarily dictates certain activities off-limits.
We all have a choice to live selfishly or to live selflessly. Most people strike a balance between the two, and I think that's good and appropriate.
Q wrote: I understand your position to be, "human existence is meaningful because humans exist."
I don't think mere existence is enough to create meaning. I think that we are able to assign meanings to things, like this string of letters that you are reading, because of our intellectual capacity to reflect on ideas and communicate. Not unlike morality, "meanings" come about by virtue of the relationships between things. Our ancestors survived by seeing relationships between things, and we instinctively look for new ways of understanding, new relationships.
Whereas I am saying that God, who transcends the material universe, and who is the source of human beings and everything else that exists — that this God validates human existence. Why doesn't God need another [validation of] her existence? Because God is existence. Whereas this material universe cannot be equated with existence. Once, it did not exist. Eventually it will once again cease to exist; or at least, all living beings will cease to exist.
In my view, validation is completely irrelevant. I know I exist - I have no good evidence that God exists, but I do have evidence that God does not exist. My own existence is a brute fact, one I cannot ignore. To me, the evidence is quite clear. I am a highly complex being, made up of constituent parts. The universe operates according to laws that humans are able to discover, and my existence is in virtue of these things that make up my body, which is me. When my body is gone, I will be gone too.
When you say that God is existence, then I must reply that when you assert that God exists, it seems to me that you are saying Existence exists. Being the totality of all that exists, God must include evil and tragedy and pain just as much as it includes good and hope and all things pleasant.
Just a few of the many reasons that people will not want to accept what I have outlined here are: 1) it means we are mortal, 2) it means our loved ones who have passed away are truly gone, 3) it means that our actions have real, irrevocable consequences 4) it means that humans are animals.
I am under no illusions that anyone will be convinced by this - I fully expect disagreement. It is my hope that by posting this I will further understanding and dialogue, and foster tolerance.
I hope this clears the air somewhat. No longer can I be accused of merely hinting around at my philosophical position. There is material here (no pun intended) for many a lengthy dialogue to come. Or, it could be the case that my theistic friends will avoid discussing these things with me from now on. If so, I understand and respect that, too.
This post has been bubbling about in my little brain for two weeks now. Tonight everything is frothing forth.
Q,
Let me preface this by saying that I respect your right to believe what you wish concerning these matters. I know firsthand how difficult and depressing it can be to have your entire world-view turned upside down. Like you, and Mayfly, and Arglor, I take no pleasure in undermining anyone's beliefs.
I do take pleasure in intelligent discussion and debate, and I think you do the same. I think we both value truth, even though we disagree about what is true. So I appreciate the courage you exibit in just listening to what I and others have to say, and I hope you realize it takes courage for me to lay bare my beliefs and have them openly criticized. I think that you, I, Arglor, Mayfly, and everyone that has taken part in this discussion has shown that courage.
In short, I think we are all commendable for trying to understand one another. I firmly believe that understanding must come before constructive dialogue.
Now, on to the substance. I think I understand where the miscommunication is this time. I will strive to make my points with concrete examples from now on, wherever I am able. And I will avoid all talk of turtles. ;-)
Q wrote: God is perfectly sufficient to explain the existence of the kind of complexity we have been discussing since Mayfly's original post.
You are quite right, God is sufficient to explain all kinds of instances of complexity. God can string nucleotides together all millenium long without batting an eyelash, more easily than I can assemble a child's bicycle. In this sense, you are absolutely correct.
Consider the implications of what are we saying, however, when we assert that because we don't know how something has happened, God must be responsible for it. No one was there to see how the amino acids and nucleotides formed. I don't know and you don't know; we don't know if God did it or not. One day we may figure it out, or we may never know. It doesn't follow from our lack of understanding that God had to have done it.
Suppose we can be sure that supernatural forces caused the amino acids and nucleotides to come together a certain way. If the transcendant realm does not usually interact with ours, then how do these forces cross over from that transcendant realm into our material realm, in order to coerce or manipulate matter into forms it can't (by hypothesis) take on in nature? We could assume these forces are from God, but how do we know? Are there many such transcendant realms, with other transcendant entities (angels or demons perhaps)? How do they exist? Of what do they consist? Does the transcendant realm follow laws, as our material realm seems to do? In the material world, we have noticed a marked correspondence between brain activity and human thought; is there some kind of activity in the transcendant realm that corresponds to the thoughts of transcendant beings? Do such beings even have thoughts?
There's no end to the questions we can ask about such a transcendant realm and the transcendant being/s that occupy it, and how they supposedly interact with us in the material realm. Following this train of thought, you can see that we have to introduce a whole new order of complexity, in the form of a transcendant realm and transcedant being/s, to explain just one perplexing instance of complexity, namely the formation of nucleotides and amino acid chains. Moreover, we have no good evidence for such a realm, other than the fact that we have an unexplained problem in evolutionary biology/chemistry.
On the other hand, we can investigate other options - matter and forces, physics and chemistry, things we do have some hope of understanding, because they are made up of much the same stuff as we are. We already have evidence, in the form of hundreds of years of scientific observation, hypotheses, repeated testing, and valid predictions, supporting our notions that they exist.
Q wrote: I'm building a list of challenges to a purely materialistic view of the universe:
(1) Where did matter/energy come from; or, if it is supposed to be eternal, how does that correspond to what we can observe about the universe?
(2) How did inanimate matter become living matter?
(3) How did human beings make the leap to consciousness?
(4) How do atheists adequately account for meaning and morality?
To your point 1: my understanding is that energy and matter are interchangeable and indestructible, the 2nd law notwithstanding. The 2nd law indicates that eventually no energy will be usable for work. It looks bleak, depressing even - but that doesn't mean it's not true. If it helps, there is hope in a theory according to which, as the universe expands, the unusable heat energy rarifies to a certain point, stretching space itself to the tearing point, which somehow causes another big bang (I don't know how it supposedly works). But even if this is true, the human race as we know it will be long gone. The way I see it, humanity is ignorant of many things and the future of the universe is uncertain. Personally, I like to think that our universe is one of many, but I don't think anyone knows.
To your point 2: Following fundamental, universal laws governing matter and energy, matter was arranged in complex forms, eventually culminating in life. We can observe the same kinds of reactions going on today, as the Urey-Miller experiment and other experiments show. We don't have to know every single detail and step in the process to come to this conclusion.
point 3 - I believe that over millions of years life evolved to the point of consciousness. I observe behavior in humans and other animals that indicates consciousness not unlike my own, and generally speaking the more sophisticated an animal's nervous system, the more conscious they seem to me. A plant is not conscious at all, a worm reacts to stimulii, a dog can be friendly or mean. I believe that consciousness is the product of complex biochemical and bioelectrical activity, and I believe that consciousness stops when that activity stops.
point 4 - I think that there is a rational basis for morality. I think morality arises as a consequence of physical, conscious, rational (or at least semi-rational) agents being in relationship and being able to affect one another. I believe morality is objective, not subjective, because moral rules are independant of what any moral agent or group of moral agents think or believe (even the postulated entity known as God). Morality is a consequence of what and who we are; it is not a decision made by us, and it does not issue from a higher power or plane of existence.
I think ethics stems from human nature, not God's nature. I cannot emphasize enough that this does not mean that morality is arbitrary or subjective. It means that morality is dictated by states-of-affairs in the real, physical world, and as such is flexible. What I mean by this, by way of example, is that killing is wrong when it's murder, but it's all right in self-defense. If we humans had natural body armor, it might be morally acceptable to go around hitting each other hard with baseball bats, but we're not, so it's not. It is a real, objective fact that all of our actions have consequences, and some of the consequences are good and some of them bad. Good is to be embraced and encouraged, and bad or evil is to be avoided and discouraged.
Even if God exists, I would believe the same things about ethics. I think God would abide by moral rules for the same reasons that we human beings should abide by them - because they are good. I believe that goodness is it's own reward, I don't believe that we should be threatened or cajoled by false promises into doing it.
Goodness is not God. Goodness is an abstraction, no matter how it exists, not a person. Good is good because it is beneficial to someone. Evil is evil because it harms someone, not because God arbitrarily dictates certain activities off-limits.
We all have a choice to live selfishly or to live selflessly. Most people strike a balance between the two, and I think that's good and appropriate.
Q wrote: I understand your position to be, "human existence is meaningful because humans exist."
I don't think mere existence is enough to create meaning. I think that we are able to assign meanings to things, like this string of letters that you are reading, because of our intellectual capacity to reflect on ideas and communicate. Not unlike morality, "meanings" come about by virtue of the relationships between things. Our ancestors survived by seeing relationships between things, and we instinctively look for new ways of understanding, new relationships.
Whereas I am saying that God, who transcends the material universe, and who is the source of human beings and everything else that exists — that this God validates human existence. Why doesn't God need another [validation of] her existence? Because God is existence. Whereas this material universe cannot be equated with existence. Once, it did not exist. Eventually it will once again cease to exist; or at least, all living beings will cease to exist.
In my view, validation is completely irrelevant. I know I exist - I have no good evidence that God exists, but I do have evidence that God does not exist. My own existence is a brute fact, one I cannot ignore. To me, the evidence is quite clear. I am a highly complex being, made up of constituent parts. The universe operates according to laws that humans are able to discover, and my existence is in virtue of these things that make up my body, which is me. When my body is gone, I will be gone too.
When you say that God is existence, then I must reply that when you assert that God exists, it seems to me that you are saying Existence exists. Being the totality of all that exists, God must include evil and tragedy and pain just as much as it includes good and hope and all things pleasant.
Just a few of the many reasons that people will not want to accept what I have outlined here are: 1) it means we are mortal, 2) it means our loved ones who have passed away are truly gone, 3) it means that our actions have real, irrevocable consequences 4) it means that humans are animals.
I am under no illusions that anyone will be convinced by this - I fully expect disagreement. It is my hope that by posting this I will further understanding and dialogue, and foster tolerance.
I hope this clears the air somewhat. No longer can I be accused of merely hinting around at my philosophical position. There is material here (no pun intended) for many a lengthy dialogue to come. Or, it could be the case that my theistic friends will avoid discussing these things with me from now on. If so, I understand and respect that, too.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
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:
- What makes an action morally right, wrong, or neutral is God's command; and
- In order to determine what is right/wrong/neutral, we must determine what it is that God has commanded.
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:
- God exists
- If God exists, then he created morality.
- If God created morality, then God's commands made actions morally right, wrong, or neutral.
- Conclusion: God's commands made actions morally right, wrong, or neutral.
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.
Friday, July 08, 2005
minority me
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).
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Intelligent design?
This says it all. By Tom Toles. Here is a link: intelligent design cartoon;
By the way, I noticed that the a-words are now about trains. I can't wait to see what comes up next. I'll have to think of some interesting things to write about, and see how they respond. This could get fun!
Has anyone else noticed that the a-words change in the comment windows? I bet if you're creative with your comments you can get some interesting results. (I guess I'm asking Arglor since no one else reads this. Or if they do, they are very quiet.)
Come on snaars fans! Tell me what you really think about this cartoon!
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Another joke ... just because
It's been several days since posting anything ... mostly because what little time I've had has been spent posting to some OTHER blog. (Heh heh David. :-))
Anyway I want to post somehting just to keep this going, so here's some more humor. I thought this would be funny for anyone - both those who believe in God and those who don't.
Anyway I want to post somehting just to keep this going, so here's some more humor. I thought this would be funny for anyone - both those who believe in God and those who don't.
Why God never got a PhD
- He had only one major publication.
- It was written in Aramaic, not in English.
- It has no references.
- It wasn't even published in a refereed journal.
- There are serious doubts he wrote it himself.
- It may be true that he created the world, but what has he done since then?
- His cooperative efforts have been quite limited.
- The Scientific community has had a hard time replicating his results.
- He unlawfully performed not only Animal, but *Human* testing.
- When one experiment went awry, he tried to cover it by drowning his subjects.
- When subjects didn't behave as predicted, he deleted them from the sample.
- He rarely came to class, just told his students to read the book.
- Some say he had his son to teach the class.
- He expelled his first two students for learning.
- Although there were only 10 requirements, most of his students failed his tests.
- His office hours were infrequent and usually held on a mountain top.
Sunday, March 06, 2005
the atheist joke
Writing the previous post put me in mind of a joke. A theologian and a philosopher are talking.
The theologian says, 'A philosopher is like a blind man in a dark room searching for a black cat that isn't there.'
'True,' says the philosopher, 'and if he were a theologian, he'd find it.'
The theologian says, 'A philosopher is like a blind man in a dark room searching for a black cat that isn't there.'
'True,' says the philosopher, 'and if he were a theologian, he'd find it.'
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