• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!
  • Welcome to our archives. No new posts are allowed here.

Theists do not have a monopoly on Morality

No, you aren't. The 'I am' is a pun that does not translate to either Greek or English.

But the Vulgate says it well. "dixit Deus ad Mosen ego sum qui sum ait sic dices filiis Israhel qui est misit me ad vos"
 
Those Greek philosophers were the best. I have no idea why Christianity has abandoned the Greeks that were so highly esteemed by the forerunners. It's a shame.

They abandonded them because Greek Philosophy did not aim to enslave people for the benefit of the priviledged. That's why for 2,000 years Christianity became the close partner of Kings and Lords and the Elites in all European societies.

Until some woke up and rejected them.
 
But the Vulgate says it well. "dixit Deus ad Mosen ego sum qui sum ait sic dices filiis Israhel qui est misit me ad vos"

That does not matter to me. However, the phrase "ehyeh ašer ehyeh" also is not even in the same tense, a more accurate translation would be 'I will be what I will be" It is also similar, but not exact with how the tetra gammon would be pronounced, so it's a pun, rather than being literal.

So the use of 'I am' is ignoring the word play, and is a mistranslation of the tense. In other words, it got distorted in translation.
 
They abandonded them because Greek Philosophy did not aim to enslave people for the benefit of the priviledged. That's why for 2,000 years Christianity became the close partner of Kings and Lords and the Elites in all European societies.

Until some woke up and rejected them.

Ya. You still see some good synthesis as time went on, but you're right, the church started blending with the state. Both of the institutions got pretty nasty.
 
That does not matter to me. However, the phrase "ehyeh ašer ehyeh" also is not even in the same tense, a more accurate translation would be 'I will be what I will be" It is also similar, but not exact with how the tetra gammon would be pronounced, so it's a pun, rather than being literal.

So the use of 'I am' is ignoring the word play, and is a mistranslation of the tense. In other words, it got distorted in translation.

So what is the pun? I don't know Hebrew, only Latin
 
Let me put an end to this common inquiry by asserting: There is no such thing as objective morality.

You really think that by asserting it in an internet post, you can finally settle the moral relativism vs moral objectivism question that philosophers have spent the last several hundred years debating and refining? Furthermore, you think your answer will be so enlightening that it will not only end the debate once and for all but will allow you to use that as a platform from which to counter religious arguments?

Sorry, but that's not going to happen. In fact, most secular moral philosophers abandoned moral/ethical objectivism long ago; so your position isn't even widely supported among atheists in the field dedicated to studying such things. Moral relativism has very well known weaknesses.

For example, take female circumcision, an incredibly painful and barbaric practice designed to scar young girls and ruin their sex lives under the misguided assumption that women should not enjoy sex. Moral relativism would posit that female circumcision is not immoral within such cultures and thus, there is no reason to encourage cultures still practicing this to change to a more humane way of treating girls and dealing with female sexuality. We shouldn't meddle with such cultures because there's nothing about our view of the rights of young girls or the sexuality of women that is more moral than the view of those cultures that prefer female circumcision.

The idea of moral relativism is so problematic that it has been largely abandoned by philosophers and the last few centuries of work in this field have been dedicated to defining and justifying objectivist moral frameworks that do not depend upon religion.
 
I'm currently getting my masters in Philosophy, and your question is perfect.

Nice! Hear there's good $$$ in that... ;) :peace

Sidgwick dismisses the is-ought gap by making a fact-value distinction and then introducing moral intuition. My first reaction to this was that it was total garbage. But he's so right. If you like reading (cause it's a long book) it's called "The Method of Ethics". He's not an organized writter, either btw. Don't pick up unless you like a challenge.

I haven't read sidgwick but that sounds more or less to be my own position. I see the is-ought problem as just an epistemological barrier, not a barrier to there being moral facts (or us being aware of them). Only to justifying them. Which is still a problem in its own right, though, I would say. Is he addressing that?

Also, there's an article called "Darwinian Dilemma" by Sharon Street (super famous) where she argues our morality can't come from anything but evolution. Then there's a response called "The Objectivity of Ethics and the Unity of Practical Reason by Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer (Singer is also super-famous) which says one of her arguments is bunk and concludes the opposite. I'm with Singer on this one, big time. This plus Sidgwick is what I'm writing my paper on for this class.

I'll add it to my reading list, which is unfortunately growing faster than I'm consuming these days. So many books, so little time, y'know?

I wouldn't say that our moral intutions couldn't have come from anything else, but I would say that it did (along with pretty much everything else about us - we are products of evolution, after all). But is sharon presenting that as a problem? Arguing something along the lines that evolved moral intutions wouldn't necessarily be truth-tracking?
 
Last edited:
Not only do they not have a monopoly on morality, they seem to barely have a grasp on morality. The more religious someone is, the more skewed their ideas of morality seem to get.
 
Actually, the New Testament makes use of Greek philosophy. It's really cool. Jesus is called "the Word" over and over. This makes absolutely no sense in English. People that try to make sense of it without understanding the Greek philosophers are dumb. Jesus is called Logos, which does mean "word", but it also means "reason", "logic", "argument", etc, and has that connotation. More importantly, Heraclitus wrote massive tomes on what he called "Logos". John is totally using Heraclitus to explain his religion. According to Heraclitus, Logos is divine, eternal, created order from chaos, connects to human beings, unifies, and adherence to the Logos naturally promotes peace and civilization, and a whole bunch of Jesus similarities. Even more, Justin Martyr (early 2nd century) wrote about how Heraclitus and Socrates were Christians before Christianity!

Guys at the beginning of Christianity would absolutely agree with you. Those Greek philosophers were the best. I have no idea why Christianity has abandoned the Greeks that were so highly esteemed by the forerunners. It's a shame.

Christianity didn't abandon the Greeks. Christian theology, starting with Augustine of Hippo and going through the middle ages, dedicated itself to harmonizing Greek philosophy with Christian teaching. Platonism is very strong within Christian theology. But the process was eventually completed and theology went on to advance in other directions. So, asking why Christianity abandoned Greek philosophy is like asking why Mathematics abandoned Pythagoras; it didn't, it integrated those advances and then moved on to Calculus.
 
Nice! Hear there's good $$$ in that... ;) :peace

I'll get paid in quarters...

I haven't read sidgwick but that sounds more or less to be my own position. I see the is-ought problem as just an epistemological barrier, not a barrier to there being moral facts (or us being aware of them). Only to justifying them. Which is still a problem in its own right, though, I would say. Is he addressing that?

That exactly. He's really right up your alley. It's a shame he's a crappy writer. He asserts that the intuitive first principle is pleasure is good, pain is bad. He asserts a few more down the way. He's a Utilitarian, but we can't all be perfect.

I wouldn't say that our moral intutions couldn't have come from anything else, but I would say that it did (along with pretty much everything else about us - we are products of evolution, after all). But is sharon presenting that as a problem? Arguing something along the lines that evolved moral intutions wouldn't necessarily be truth-tracking?

Street says that evolution effectively blinds us from ever knowing anything objective. We can only know things through our evolutionary lens. I think reason happens to be something we evolved into that ends up allowing us to take off the lens (or at least understand how to compensate). Singer argues this with me. He's also a dirty Utilitarian...
 
Christianity didn't abandon the Greeks. Christian theology, starting with Augustine of Hippo and going through the middle ages, dedicated itself to harmonizing Greek philosophy with Christian teaching. Platonism is very strong within Christian theology. But the process was eventually completed and theology went on to advance in other directions. So, asking why Christianity abandoned Greek philosophy is like asking why Mathematics abandoned Pythagoras; it didn't, it integrated those advances and then moved on to Calculus.

But I'm a Christian and very, very anti-Plantonist. The earlier guys were pro-Aristotle like me. And Aristotle's world view is the exact scientific stance in our modern era. The only guys to seriously study Aristotle during the Scholastic period were Aquinas and Boethius. And they were 600 years apart.
 
Morality is rooted in knowledge. It is not objective because it evolves as we become more knowledgable.

An cat that kills a mouse is not immoral, because it does not know any better. Likewise, the founders were not immoral people despite slavery, because they also did not know any better. Even Christians agree with this, it took Adam and Eve to eat from the fruit of knowledge in order to know good from bad. What was once moral, no longer is.

Knowledge not only propels the human race forward, it also makes us better.
 
Morality is rooted in knowledge. It is not objective because it evolves as we become more knowledgable.

An cat that kills a mouse is not immoral, because it does not know any better. Likewise, the founders were not immoral people despite slavery, because they also did not know any better. Even Christians agree with this, it took Adam and Eve to eat from the fruit of knowledge in order to know good from bad. What was once moral, no longer is.

Knowledge not only propels the human race forward, it also makes us better.

I think "to be moral" must be subjective. However, I think we can distinguish that from morality itself. There are two guys that press a button. The button kills a random person. The first guy knows what the button does and the second does not. The first guy is not moral; the second guy is. It's obviously subjective. However, actions aren't subjective. The two guys are doing the same action, we simply blame the one and not the other due to subjective knowledge. There's another view point that I find especially important, and that's the omniscient 3rd person. We should not blame the second guy, but isn't that action wrong? He's not to blame, but we still think he shouldn't have pressed the button. So, from the objective standpoint, they both still did something wrong. Yet, blame is not distributed via objective means.
 
But I'm a Christian and very, very anti-Plantonist. The earlier guys were pro-Aristotle like me. And Aristotle's world view is the exact scientific stance in our modern era. The only guys to seriously study Aristotle during the Scholastic period were Aquinas and Boethius. And they were 600 years apart.

Augustine's Theology was basically a Christianization of Platonism. Augustine then served as the foundation of Christian theology. The idea of God as transcendent, for example, is a result of Augustine's integration of Plato's two-level model (forms theory) into Christian thought. Plato pervades Augustine's teaching and Augustine still resounds more strongly than any other ancient theologian throughout modern Christian theology. Augustine is also the basis of Calvinism, the dominant Christian theology to this day.

The point of saying all of that is that if you are anti-Plato, I can't imagine your theology winds up looking like anything that we currently consider "Christian". That's not to say that what is currently considered Christian is guaranteed to be what "true Christianity" (if there is such a thing) should be like; I'm certainly open to hearing arguments about how accepting platonic ideals within Christianity perverted the faith. Rather the point is that if you are anti-platonic, it's very unlikely most people would consider your views Christian.
 
Last edited:
I think "to be moral" must be subjective. However, I think we can distinguish that from morality itself. There are two guys that press a button. The button kills a random person. The first guy knows what the button does and the second does not. The first guy is not moral; the second guy is. It's obviously subjective. However, actions aren't subjective. The two guys are doing the same action, we simply blame the one and not the other due to subjective knowledge. There's another view point that I find especially important, and that's the omniscient 3rd person. We should not blame the second guy, but isn't that action wrong? He's not to blame, but we still think he shouldn't have pressed the button. So, from the objective standpoint, they both still did something wrong. Yet, blame is not distributed via objective means.

Right, say there is a big red button on the street. Pressing it is not immoral. Pressing it when you know that by pressing it you kill someone in a 10m area is immoral.
 
So what is the pun? I don't know Hebrew, only Latin

The pun is the 'I will be what I will be' is similar in sound to the tetragamon. .. it doesnt translate well.
 
The pun is the 'I will be what I will be' is similar in sound to the tetragamon. .. it doesnt translate well.

From the little I know, the tetragamon and the "I will be what I will be" come from the same root in Hebrew meaning "to be". I always thought that the "I will be what I will be" should be understood as "Ever-living one" or something like that. Is that horribly off?

Right, say there is a big red button on the street. Pressing it is not immoral. Pressing it when you know that by pressing it you kill someone in a 10m area is immoral.

Goodie =)

Augustine's Theology was basically a Christianization of Platonism. Augustine then served as the foundation of Christian theology. The idea of God as transcendent, for example, is a result of Augustine's integration of Plato's two-level model (forms theory) into Christian thought. Plato pervades Augustine's teaching and Augustine still resounds more strongly than any other ancient theologian throughout modern Christian theology. Augustine is also the basis of Calvinism, the dominant Christian theology to this day.

The point of saying all of that is that if you are anti-Plato, I can't imagine your theology winds up looking like anything that we currently consider "Christian". That's not to say that what is currently considered Christian is guaranteed to be what "true Christianity" (if there is such a thing) should be like; I'm certainly open to hearing arguments about how accepting platonic ideals within Christianity perverted the faith. Rather the point is that if you are anti-platonic, it's very unlikely most people would consider your views Christian.

My Christian beliefs don't actually look like much of the mainstream. The concept of "disembodied soul" is an oxymoron to me. When the Christian dies, he doesn't go float around in heaven or purgatory or anywhere. He's dead. This is Aristotelian hylomorphism, but to a standard Christian it looks like I deny the entire spiritual world. And this is just one of the differences. Yes, I think Augustine Platonized Christianity. I think a bunch of people helped him along the way. Boethius and Aquinas moved toward Aristotle more than Plato, but there were still certain plantoic doctrines that they should have abandoned (such as the immortality of people).

And I'm not a Calvinist, although I do hold to 2.5 points. I'm just an odd Lutheran.
 
For the people who fit that bill, religion in the end doesn't matter. There are people both religious and non-religious and atheist who behave morally because they want to, and are not fearful of police because they have no intention of doing untoward things. There are those, of all philosophies, that need some threat or another to behave morally. And those that even with the threat of police still won't behave morally.
:attn1: .................. See below:
"brute fore of the police are the only thing keeping the people in line" - where is your evidence for this assertion? are there or have there ever been societies that do not have the 'brute force of police' that result in people behaving 'out of line"
There is the big huge example of the Civil War where the military (the police) had to forcibly suppress the racist-barbarians and they still today cheer on their racist rebel cause so only the force of law enforcements keeps the entire USA from being divided or again flowing with blood and cruelty.

There is also the force of laws is what broke up the huge monopolies, LINK, and it was that same law enforcement that kept Bill Gates and Microsoft in check.

The very idea that the extraordinary greed and lust and violence of the American people is NOT contained ONLY only by the force of the police is just absurd.

The morality in the USA is the force of law - the police.
 
Religious parables about morality are an attempt to identify and codify the innate attributes of humankind. Our notions of right and wrong come from our biology and our intellect (which comes from our biology). We evolved morality. It was not handed down to us. Nothing of morality comes from religion, and because it attempts to maintain past notions in the present day without regard to their merits, religion has regressive views of right and wrong compared to modern, secular ideas.

If religion disappeared, no one would act worse than they do. But a lot of people who are driven to evil by the ignorance of the past would no longer do so.
 
Religious parables about morality are an attempt to identify and codify the innate attributes of humankind. Our notions of right and wrong come from our biology and our intellect (which comes from our biology). We evolved morality. It was not handed down to us. Nothing of morality comes from religion, and because it attempts to maintain past notions in the present day without regard to their merits, religion has regressive views of right and wrong compared to modern, secular ideas.

If religion disappeared, no one would act worse than they do. But a lot of people who are driven to evil by the ignorance of the past would no longer do so.
Do name a few moralities which evolved by humanity.

Or just name one (1).
 
Do name a few moralities which evolved by humanity.

Or just name one (1).

Since religions are made and orchestrated by men, I'm going to suggest ALL morality evolved by humanity, and over time has changed somewhat as the world has changed.
 
I would say that reason can play a role in extending moral judgments (eg, pain is wrong. punching this baby causes pain. therefore, punching babies is wrong), but not in the initial moral judgment (there is no way to derive that "pain is wrong"). To me the is-ought problem appears intractable.

So we've had several conversations, some of which have led me to new ways of thinking (thx btw). I have a question for you....Do you believe that the is-ought distinction is a problem that needs to be managed before we ca
 
Morality is rooted in knowledge. It is not objective because it evolves as we become more knowledgable.

An cat that kills a mouse is not immoral, because it does not know any better. Likewise, the founders were not immoral people despite slavery, because they also did not know any better. Even Christians agree with this, it took Adam and Eve to eat from the fruit of knowledge in order to know good from bad. What was once moral, no longer is.

Knowledge not only propels the human race forward, it also makes us better.

Morality is the framework in which we judge actions based on what we deem valuable. Those actions in which we fine valuable we call moral. Once we subjectively decide that something has value then we can make objective distinctions upon what is im/moral. Knowledge as you point out helps us make subjective decisions about those things we consider moral as there are things that can be known, that is, facts, about happiness and well-being and pain and suffering.

I use the word "we" because there is no morality in the "I" sense Actions, or at least the consequences of actions are judged by others around you because of the affects they can have on the group.
 
Back
Top Bottom