America Without God: No 'Moral Facts'

[NYcarbineer]

Is not eating cows a moral 'fact'?

 

[guno]

1. I was listening to Dennis Prager on the radio, and he referred to this NYTimes piece by a secular philosopher, called "Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts." http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.co...ildren-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/?_r=0




2. Most children who weren't brought up in a religious household, with a clear recognition of God, fail to recognize the difference between moral facts, and opinions.

While the author of the article bemoans, as do most of us, that"the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture" he fails to grasp the reason for this situation..

3. ".... if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised?.... many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts."




4. While raising an excellent point, our philosopher misses the brass ring, here: "What I didn’t know was where this attitude came from. Given the presence of moral relativism in some academic circles, some people might naturally assume that philosophers themselves are to blame."



5.He may not know the provenance.....but I know where the view originates. The proximate roots of this view can be traced to the anthropologist Franz Boas, who, in an effort to study exotic cultures without prejudice, found it useful to take the position that no culture is superior to any other. Thus was born the idea of cultural relativity.

The idea spread like wildfire through the universities, catapulted by the radical impetus of the sixties. ready and willing to reject "the universality of Western norms and principles."
Bawer, "The Victim's Revolution"

a. The more fundamental inception was the French Revolution, which threw out God and religion.
Without the concept of God who sets the rules of morality.....every moral fact is no more than an opinion.




b. "Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture. This principle was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and later popularized by his students. Boas first articulated the idea in 1887:

"...civilization is not something absolute, but ... is relative, and ... our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes."[1] ....
https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/t...elativism.html




6. Our philosopher seems shocked to find that the Enlightenment ideas, those of David Hume, have been accepted, wholesale, in society.
" When I went to visit my son’s second grade open house, I found a troubling pair of signs hanging over the bulletin board. They read:

Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes."

You can see where this leaves 'God' or 'religion.'




7. In the West, the dichotomy between empirical truth and morality, or values, began with the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, impressive as it was, so much so that many thinkers elevated empirical science to the sole source of truth.

a. Empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge is derived from the senses: what we see, hear, hold, weigh, and measure. Where, then do we find moral truths? Clearly, under such a definition, values and morals could not be truths, but simply emotions, feelings.

b. Empiricist philosopher Hume reasoned this way: if knowledge is based on sensations, then morality, too, must come from sensations, i.e. pain or pleasure, or, as he put it, a matter of ‘taste and sentiment,” Hume claims then, that moral distinctions are not derived from reason but rather from sentiment.
Hume's Moral Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)



This view reduces morality to personal taste: “Whatever works for you.”

Lol, an imagined supernatural being who cannot even be proven to exist, as a fact, is required for people to decide that there are moral 'facts'?

Amazing

It always strikes me as very bizarre that we don't treat those who believe in invisible, magical beings flying around as delusional and mentally ill.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That

 

[Moonglow]

Is not eating cows a moral 'fact'?

I prefer the oyster dilemma....

 

[PoliticalChic]

1. I was listening to Dennis Prager on the radio, and he referred to this NYTimes piece by a secular philosopher, called "Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts." http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.co...ildren-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/?_r=0




2. Most children who weren't brought up in a religious household, with a clear recognition of God, fail to recognize the difference between moral facts, and opinions.

While the author of the article bemoans, as do most of us, that"the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture" he fails to grasp the reason for this situation..

3. ".... if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised?.... many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts."




4. While raising an excellent point, our philosopher misses the brass ring, here: "What I didn’t know was where this attitude came from. Given the presence of moral relativism in some academic circles, some people might naturally assume that philosophers themselves are to blame."



5.He may not know the provenance.....but I know where the view originates. The proximate roots of this view can be traced to the anthropologist Franz Boas, who, in an effort to study exotic cultures without prejudice, found it useful to take the position that no culture is superior to any other. Thus was born the idea of cultural relativity.

The idea spread like wildfire through the universities, catapulted by the radical impetus of the sixties. ready and willing to reject "the universality of Western norms and principles."
Bawer, "The Victim's Revolution"

a. The more fundamental inception was the French Revolution, which threw out God and religion.
Without the concept of God who sets the rules of morality.....every moral fact is no more than an opinion.




b. "Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture. This principle was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and later popularized by his students. Boas first articulated the idea in 1887:

"...civilization is not something absolute, but ... is relative, and ... our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes."[1] ....
https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/t...elativism.html




6. Our philosopher seems shocked to find that the Enlightenment ideas, those of David Hume, have been accepted, wholesale, in society.
" When I went to visit my son’s second grade open house, I found a troubling pair of signs hanging over the bulletin board. They read:

Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes."

You can see where this leaves 'God' or 'religion.'




7. In the West, the dichotomy between empirical truth and morality, or values, began with the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, impressive as it was, so much so that many thinkers elevated empirical science to the sole source of truth.

a. Empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge is derived from the senses: what we see, hear, hold, weigh, and measure. Where, then do we find moral truths? Clearly, under such a definition, values and morals could not be truths, but simply emotions, feelings.

b. Empiricist philosopher Hume reasoned this way: if knowledge is based on sensations, then morality, too, must come from sensations, i.e. pain or pleasure, or, as he put it, a matter of ‘taste and sentiment,” Hume claims then, that moral distinctions are not derived from reason but rather from sentiment.
Hume's Moral Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)



This view reduces morality to personal taste: “Whatever works for you.”

Lol, an imagined supernatural being who cannot even be proven to exist, as a fact, is required for people to decide that there are moral 'facts'?

Amazing

It always strikes me as very bizarre that we don't treat those who believe in invisible, magical beings flying around as delusional and mentally ill.

Both the Declaration of Independence and our judicial system are based on those beliefs.

Still "delusional and mentally ill"?

 

[guno]

The weak willed or adolescent minded need a daddy figure to teach them right from wrong.

Us daddys know this.

But hell, if some people need god to do that for them, i guess its better that they learn these things from somewhere as opposed to being the narcissitic monsters theyd supposedly be without religion.

"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish"

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

- Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954), quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman

In January of 1936, a young girl named Phyllis wrote to Albert Einstein on behalf of her Sunday school class, and asked, "Do scientists pray?"

Dr. Einstein answered as follows:

January 24, 1936

Dear Phyllis,

I will attempt to reply to your question as simply as I can. Here is my answer:

Scientists believe that every occurrence, including the affairs of human beings, is due to the laws of nature. Therefore a scientist cannot be inclined to believe that the course of events can be influenced by prayer, that is, by a supernaturally manifested wish.

However, we must concede that our actual knowledge of these forces is imperfect, so that in the end the belief in the existence of a final, ultimate spirit rests on a kind of faith. Such belief remains widespread even with the current achievements in science.

But also, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is surely quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.

With cordial greetings,

your A. Einstein"

Letters of Note Dear Einstein Do Scientists Pray

My Grandparents knew Dr Einstein, he was a secular Jew like they were
Albert Einstein on the Existence of God: Did Einstein Believe in God?

If Albert Einstein believed in anything he would call a "god," it wasn't the sort of god which religious theists today typically believe in. Einstein explicitly rejected the possible existence of any sort of "personal god"which could care about human existence, would interact with us, or would answer prayers. In fact, Einstein went so far as to argue that belief in such a god was a legacy of humanity's primitive existence when we created such supernatural beings to explain events around us.

Albert Einstein on the Existence of God Did Einstein Believe in God Human Fantasy Created Gods Which Now Must Be Given Up

 

[PoliticalChic]

For some societies what we might call murder isn't considered wrong, lokevsay stoning a gay man

Or some might consider killings we commit to be murder, like say injecting a killer with poison

So who is right?

You're not serious...are you?

Let's just agree that you're a dope.

Without someone to tell you what you think/believe, you are unable to converse, debate or discuss. As always, you hide behind insults.

You're still whining about your inadequacies being revealed??

Shouldn't you be used to it?

 

[Dot Com]

God is not proven therefore the authority of YOUR morals stands on shaky ground.

My morals come from human experience and reasoning.

Amd so do the bible's if the bible was simply written by men as a means of mind control, which im fairly certain it was.

^ that

PLUS, why do cons always put the onus of outcomes on institutions instead of getting off of their asses & parenting? EXTREMELY hypocritical if you ask me.

Hmmm? PoliticalSpice?
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[sealybobo]

"But...without the authority of God, there are no moral facts.....only opinions...and any opinion can be countered with another opinion."

Oh, so that makes me the mass murderer.

You're welcome to your idiotic opinions but don't pretend you're interested in a conversation. Every single one of your posts is loaded with your usual insults.

This is just SSDD from our resident home schooled, fundie nutter.

Define "murder" and what is bad (or good) about it.
Who says?

Our society says its wrong. Did you really need to read thou shall not murder to know its wrong?

"Our society says it's wrong."

You dope......

Your god must be very proud that you are following his teachings with your egotistical, know-it-all, holier-than-thou name calling and insults, always calling people stupid, dumb, "dope".

Did you learn that in Sunday school?

Winning hearts and minds....that's what I'm all about.
But...If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.


"....egotistical...."
Hmmm....got me.

You're failing.

 

[NYcarbineer]

1. I was listening to Dennis Prager on the radio, and he referred to this NYTimes piece by a secular philosopher, called "Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts." http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.co...ildren-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/?_r=0




2. Most children who weren't brought up in a religious household, with a clear recognition of God, fail to recognize the difference between moral facts, and opinions.

While the author of the article bemoans, as do most of us, that"the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture" he fails to grasp the reason for this situation..

3. ".... if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised?.... many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts."




4. While raising an excellent point, our philosopher misses the brass ring, here: "What I didn’t know was where this attitude came from. Given the presence of moral relativism in some academic circles, some people might naturally assume that philosophers themselves are to blame."



5.He may not know the provenance.....but I know where the view originates. The proximate roots of this view can be traced to the anthropologist Franz Boas, who, in an effort to study exotic cultures without prejudice, found it useful to take the position that no culture is superior to any other. Thus was born the idea of cultural relativity.

The idea spread like wildfire through the universities, catapulted by the radical impetus of the sixties. ready and willing to reject "the universality of Western norms and principles."
Bawer, "The Victim's Revolution"

a. The more fundamental inception was the French Revolution, which threw out God and religion.
Without the concept of God who sets the rules of morality.....every moral fact is no more than an opinion.




b. "Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture. This principle was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and later popularized by his students. Boas first articulated the idea in 1887:

"...civilization is not something absolute, but ... is relative, and ... our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes."[1] ....
https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/t...elativism.html




6. Our philosopher seems shocked to find that the Enlightenment ideas, those of David Hume, have been accepted, wholesale, in society.
" When I went to visit my son’s second grade open house, I found a troubling pair of signs hanging over the bulletin board. They read:

Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes."

You can see where this leaves 'God' or 'religion.'




7. In the West, the dichotomy between empirical truth and morality, or values, began with the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, impressive as it was, so much so that many thinkers elevated empirical science to the sole source of truth.

a. Empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge is derived from the senses: what we see, hear, hold, weigh, and measure. Where, then do we find moral truths? Clearly, under such a definition, values and morals could not be truths, but simply emotions, feelings.

b. Empiricist philosopher Hume reasoned this way: if knowledge is based on sensations, then morality, too, must come from sensations, i.e. pain or pleasure, or, as he put it, a matter of ‘taste and sentiment,” Hume claims then, that moral distinctions are not derived from reason but rather from sentiment.
Hume's Moral Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)



This view reduces morality to personal taste: “Whatever works for you.”

Lol, an imagined supernatural being who cannot even be proven to exist, as a fact, is required for people to decide that there are moral 'facts'?

Amazing

It always strikes me as very bizarre that we don't treat those who believe in invisible, magical beings flying around as delusional and mentally ill.

Both the Declaration of Independence and our judicial system are based on those beliefs.

Still "delusional and mentally ill"?

Neither are based on moral absolutes handed down from the gods.

 

[NYcarbineer]

If religion comes from God, and religion establishes the moral 'facts', which I assume to mean moral absolutes,

1. why aren't they uniform across all religions?

2. why can Men change the rules of any religion whenever they choose, within the limits of the religion's procedure for changing the rules (procedures composed by Men)????

 

[PoliticalChic]

God is not proven therefore the authority of YOUR morals stands on shaky ground.

My morals come from human experience and reasoning.

Amd so do the bible's if the bible was simply written by men as a means of mind control, which im fairly certain it was.

^ that

PLUS, why do cons always put the onus of outcomes on institutions instead of getting off of their asses & parenting? EXTREMELY hypocritical if you ask me.

Hmmm? PoliticalSpice?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

. By coincidence, the ranks of the science-atheists is largely populated byMarxists and other Leftists.

As Lenin stated: "Atheism is a natural and inseparable portion of Marxism, of the theory and practice of Scientific Socialism." If God exists and is in supreme command of the universe, He possesses discretionary power, and His actions cannot always be calculated accurately in advance. The whole edifice of Marxism collapses.
The Schwarz Report | Essays


David Mamet pretty much nails such folks with this quip:

'The Left says of the Right, “You fools, it is demonstrable that dinosaurs lived one hundred million years ago, I can prove it to you, how can you say the earth was created in 4000BCE?” But this supposedintransigence on the part of the Religious Right is far less detrimental to the health of the body politic than the Left’s love affair with Marxism, Socialism, Racialism, the Command Economy,all of which have been proven via one hundred years of evidence shows only shortages, despotism and murder.'
David Mamet, "The Secret Knowledge."

 

[PoliticalChic]

Define "murder" and what is bad (or good) about it.
Who says?

Our society says its wrong. Did you really need to read thou shall not murder to know its wrong?

"Our society says it's wrong."

You dope......

Your god must be very proud that you are following his teachings with your egotistical, know-it-all, holier-than-thou name calling and insults, always calling people stupid, dumb, "dope".

Did you learn that in Sunday school?

Winning hearts and minds....that's what I'm all about.
But...If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.


"....egotistical...."
Hmmm....got me.

You're failing.

Your inability to comprehend is not my failure.

 

[sealybobo]

I ask this every sunday

I am Christian...I go to Church every Sunday and have a strong set of ethical standards because of my relationship with Jesus. It bothers me when pseud-Christians spew nonsense on the interweb and don't even go to church!

If they went to church would it be OK then?

Why aren't you at church now?

I tend to go with the belief...don't feed your faith to the trolls.

As for church...I go to the 11:30 service. I will be leaving in about an hour.

I have a friend or at least he was when we were growing up. He's such a know it all right wing conservative and he really does believe in god. His life is such a mess. He was always a slacker. Didn't finish school and lazy. Anyways, long story short he just got his second divorce and he's asking people to borrow $30k.

What I'm wondering is how come gods not helping him? My hunch is that all god is good for is helping him cope with his shitty life. Gods not helping him change just cope.

He's not helping himself.

Why do you hold Christians to a higher standard? We all have personal issues and bad habits. You shouldn't judge people...you don't know their inner issues...same with Christians...they shouldn't judge people either.

I'm just wondering why gods not helping him figure out life. You guys claim the solution to happyness is the lord. I dont see it working for him.

 

[PoliticalChic]

9. " How does the dichotomy between fact and opinion relate to morality.... Kids are asked to sort facts from opinions and, without fail,everyvalue claim is labeled as an opinion. Here’s a little test devised from questions available on fact vs. opinion worksheets online: are the following facts or opinions?


— Copying homework assignments is wrong.

— Cursing in school is inappropriate behavior.

— All men are created equal.

— It is worth sacrificing some personal liberties to protect our country from terrorism.

— It is wrong for people under the age of 21 to drink alcohol.

— Vegetarians are healthier than people who eat meat.

— Drug dealers belong in prison.

In each case, the worksheets categorize these claims as opinions. ... each of these claims is a value claim and value claims are not facts.
This is repeated ad nauseum: any claim with good, right, wrong, etc. is not a fact." http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.co...ildren-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/?_r=0

 

[sealybobo]

How come its always the so-called "christians" who say, that without their "god"/religion/bible that they would have no morals or ethics, no sense of right and wrong?

Are you nutters really only one Sunday school session away from being mass murderers?

Isn't an extreme belief in God the number one criticism of the fundamentalist Islamic extremists/terrorists?

Isn't religion so often the source of their morality?

They say " those people have perverted god" but that's the problem with delusions. I have a good delusion and your delusion is wrong. But my delusion is the right one to have.

 

[Nutz]

I am Christian...I go to Church every Sunday and have a strong set of ethical standards because of my relationship with Jesus. It bothers me when pseud-Christians spew nonsense on the interweb and don't even go to church!

If they went to church would it be OK then?

Why aren't you at church now?

I tend to go with the belief...don't feed your faith to the trolls.

As for church...I go to the 11:30 service. I will be leaving in about an hour.

I have a friend or at least he was when we were growing up. He's such a know it all right wing conservative and he really does believe in god. His life is such a mess. He was always a slacker. Didn't finish school and lazy. Anyways, long story short he just got his second divorce and he's asking people to borrow $30k.

What I'm wondering is how come gods not helping him? My hunch is that all god is good for is helping him cope with his shitty life. Gods not helping him change just cope.

He's not helping himself.

Why do you hold Christians to a higher standard? We all have personal issues and bad habits. You shouldn't judge people...you don't know their inner issues...same with Christians...they shouldn't judge people either.

I'm just wondering why gods not helping him figure out life. You guys claim the solution to happyness is the lord. I dont see it working for him.

Again, Christians are people too with emotions and quirks just like everyone else. Some people consider their faith spiritual, others intellectual or just a way of life.

Christians are people too...we are all sinners.

 

[guno]

God is not proven therefore the authority of YOUR morals stands on shaky ground.

My morals come from human experience and reasoning.

Amd so do the bible's if the bible was simply written by men as a means of mind control, which im fairly certain it was.

^ that

PLUS, why do cons always put the onus of outcomes on institutions instead of getting off of their asses & parenting? EXTREMELY hypocritical if you ask me.

Hmmm? PoliticalSpice?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

. By coincidence, the ranks of the science-atheists is largely populated byMarxists and other Leftists.

As Lenin stated: "Atheism is a natural and inseparable portion of Marxism, of the theory and practice of Scientific Socialism." If God exists and is in supreme command of the universe, He possesses discretionary power, and His actions cannot always be calculated accurately in advance. The whole edifice of Marxism collapses.
The Schwarz Report | Essays


David Mamet pretty much nails such folks with this quip:

'The Left says of the Right, “You fools, it is demonstrable that dinosaurs lived one hundred million years ago, I can prove it to you, how can you say the earth was created in 4000BCE?” But this supposedintransigence on the part of the Religious Right is far less detrimental to the health of the body politic than the Left’s love affair with Marxism, Socialism, Racialism, the Command Economy,all of which have been proven via one hundred years of evidence shows only shortages, despotism and murder.'
David Mamet, "The Secret Knowledge."

Got ya rice bowl cleaned, huh

 

[Moonglow]

— Drug dealers belong in prison.

Then put away big pharma in Sing Sing...

 

[sealybobo]

9. " How does the dichotomy between fact and opinion relate to morality.... Kids are asked to sort facts from opinions and, without fail,everyvalue claim is labeled as an opinion. Here’s a little test devised from questions available on fact vs. opinion worksheets online: are the following facts or opinions?


— Copying homework assignments is wrong.

— Cursing in school is inappropriate behavior.

— All men are created equal.

— It is worth sacrificing some personal liberties to protect our country from terrorism.

— It is wrong for people under the age of 21 to drink alcohol.

— Vegetarians are healthier than people who eat meat.

— Drug dealers belong in prison.

In each case, the worksheets categorize these claims as opinions. ... each of these claims is a value claim and value claims are not facts.
This is repeated ad nauseum: any claim with good, right, wrong, etc. is not a fact." http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.co...ildren-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/?_r=0

Cursing is wrong because you'll get in trouble. Or it will make you look bad. Or because it might offend others. Or it might lead to violence if you are cursing someone. Lots of reasons not to curse without god.

 

[Moonglow]

Depends which God you revere, whether it's moral or not according to those that judge...