AllanfromWales1 t1_itmq4oy wrote on October 24, 2022 at 7:54 PM

Reply to comment by SuperSirVexSmasher in Lab-grown meat could let humanity ignore a serious moral failing by phileconomicus

You clearly don't understand what I'm saying, which isn't this. The concept of the 'common good' is a perfectly valid basis for a moral perspective. The issue is around what counts as 'common', who (or what) is in the community. What you are suggesting is no morality at all. I think that's a stupid position to adopt.

SuperSirVexSmasher t1_itmu73j wrote on October 24, 2022 at 8:20 PM

Why do you consider there to be "no morality" rather than 8 billion people with their own subjective take on morality? If my moral compass allows me to kill you then certainly I'm still moral by my own measure, you just don't like my measure. Well, I don't like yours so we're even.

I'm simply trying to illustrate what's permissible without objective morality (i.e., everything). If there is no objective morality then morality isn't a "real" thing that exists. If "murder is wrong" doesn't exist objectively somewhere out there then it doesn't actually exist at all. We avoid murdering because we don't happen to find it trendy (it has been before) or because we don't have the power to actualize our will to commit murder (people have before).

I think what you're imagining is a scenario where you and some other people get together to decide among yourselves a version of morality you can force upon the world. So long as everyone is obeying your group's subjective morality it's as though an objective morality actually exists, but what makes YOUR moral code the correct one? You decide that it's because it satisfies conditions A, B, C but you just decided that those conditions had to be satisfied. I could decide that morality needs to satisfy X, Y, Z instead and conclude an entirely different system of morality that opposes yours completely. What's wrong for you, of course may be right for me. You can get the allies behind you, I'll get the axis behind me and the result is whoever is more powerful decides which subjective moral system survives. This isn't unlike the world today (sovereigns are still in the state of nature).

AllanfromWales1 t1_itmuow1 wrote on October 24, 2022 at 8:23 PM

You really don't understand at all what I've been saying. I've tried enough, if you won't or can't understand so be it. But just for my interest, where do you believe objective morality comes from?

SuperSirVexSmasher t1_itmwu4d wrote on October 24, 2022 at 8:37 PM

Who said I believed in objective morality? If there is an objective morality of the universe then the universe must have a design, right? Then there must be a designer which imbued the universe with that objective moral truth, right? This is the line one would have to argue.

I found the "so is it good because God says so or is God simply the messenger of what is good?" argument to be pretty good at discrediting the objective moral goodness of God until I heard an argument that went something like "Goodness is an essential element of the concept of God" (Craig). I'll paste a quote about this below.

Either way, you don't have to believe in objective morality to recognize that without it morality is not actually "real." It would be up to everyone to decide for themselves, even if that includes rape and murder.

"You state your fundamental question as follows: How do we know that God is good?Now at one level, as I explained in last week’s Question #294, that question is easy to answer: it is conceptually necessary that God be good. That is to say, goodness belongs to the very concept of God, just as being unmarried belongs to the concept of a bachelor. For (i) by definition God is a being worthy of worship, and only a being which is perfectly good would be worthy of worship; and (ii) as the greatest conceivable being God must be morally perfect, since it is better to be morally perfect than morally flawed."

That's from this page: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/on-the-goodness-of-god

AllanfromWales1 t1_itnaoga wrote on October 24, 2022 at 10:10 PM

For what it's worth, that argument only really applies if God is transcendent. If God is purely immanent, it makes little sense.

SuperSirVexSmasher t1_itni931 wrote on October 24, 2022 at 11:07 PM

Please, go on. I've not heard this criticism before.

AllanfromWales1 t1_itp0uxd wrote on October 25, 2022 at 7:08 AM

A copypasta (with minor modifications) from elsewhere on Reddit:

>Immanent vs Transcendent Deity

> For me, the key issue is the distinction between a transcendent deity and an immanent deity. YHWH is a transcendent deity - He exists outside of the world, created it, rules over it, and judges us for the extent to which we obey him. For me Deity is immanent rather than transcendent - it is in and of the world, not an external creator, but rather a manifestation of Nature itself. In other words, it doesn't rule over the world, it is the world. It is certainly not judgemental. The only incentive to worship it is the joy and inner peace you can get from being close to nature.

SuperSirVexSmasher t1_itprw47 wrote on October 25, 2022 at 12:42 PM

God is supposed to be the first cause so it should always be transcendent, or it isn't God, but I imagine it's also of this world since it's supposed to be omnipresent.

Explain why the argument doesn't work if it's immanent. Is the idea that if God is all things of reality then God is also in all evil things? I've considered this before. Is this what you mean?

AllanfromWales1 t1_itq1zpt wrote on October 25, 2022 at 2:00 PM

Not a great believer in the good/evil dichotomy. Nature is 'red in tooth and claw', so if my Deity is immanent in nature, it includes that side of things. I don't accept that is evil, though.