Thinking Christian

This is such a tangle of confused ideas…

To a moral subjectivist, morality is essentially subjective caring plus idealization of my subjective cares. A rational moral subjectivist is a person who cares about making rational inferences (that’s what makes him rational). He simply cares to think and act as rationally as he can.

For a moral realist, morality is distinct from caring, but caring remains vital to taking appropriate action.

Suppose Bob is a moral realist. By whatever means (e.g., his preacher shouts a commandment from the pulpit), he comes to believe that there is absolute moral truth, and that following good rational inference is what everyone absolutely ought to do, and what everyone absolutely ought to care about. (Never mind the fallacy of believing is preacher in the first place.)

But it is not logically necessary that Bob be rational despite his new belief that rational thinking is an absolute moral duty. This is because Bob might not actually care to respect truth, even if he believes he absolutely ought to. (It’s not as if moral realists are any more moral than subjectivists.) Bob’s subjective carelessness is the weak link in the chain connecting absolute moral truth and moral action. If Bob fails to care, then all the theorizing about moral reality is a waste of time. He acts without respect for the truth because he subjectively doesn’t care.

If we’re smart, we also know that if Bob didn’t already care about truths in general, then he wouldn’t care about moral truths in particular (even if they did exist). So, arguing for respect for truth on the grounds of absolute moral principles is circular (and wouldn’t appeal to rational people).

But not only is caring the weak link in the chain, it’s the ONLY important link in the chain. If Fred cares about truth, then he’ll make rational inferences, even if he doesn’t believe that truth-following is an absolute moral value. Even if Fred can find no good argument for an absolute moral ought, he still cares that he (and maybe others) be rational.

Yet, your argument is that Fred implicitly believes that everyone absolutely ought to care about truth. It’s a non sequitur. Fred cares about truth, and he might even care that other people care about truth, but that’s not a moral realist position.

Tom Gilson:
Now dl is talking about persons’ emotional states.

The fallacy of faulty appeal, among others, perhaps?

DL defines the actions of a moral subjectivist and moral realist by what they do, or what they wish to do, how they act, etc., but as you noted Tom, speaks not a wit about the ‘concept’ of morality, from where it originates, how it is objectively grounded, or why this should matter (grounding it or not grounding it). I think he would engender more pull among the commentators of this blog if he addressed the actual argument, rather than being swiftly dispatched, as most of us are wont to do, by this silliness.

Hi Neil,
So, can you explain what is the error in grounding the objective value of truth in a realm of Platonic forms? Do you then have to give warrant for where and how these ‘ideals’ or ‘forms’ exist? An infinite regression perhaps with no indication of ‘the buck stops here’? No ultimate standard ‘above’ the ‘forms’ to give them meaning and coherence?

Steve,
As I understand it, the Platonic forms would be the ultimate standard. They would be the ultimate source of meaning. They would terminate the regress. Whether they need to be “coherent” in order to do so I think is not a clearly answerable question.

From a Christian perspective, the Platonic forms are essentially God de-personified, which actually seems to be precisely how they were originally conceived (i.e. Socrates’ “the Good”). I’m not sure that you can argue philsophically that the Absolute must be personal. I would appeal to the idea that it would be extremely odd for the personal (human beings) to come from the impersonal (the Forms). I think this is a very good argument, but I’m not sure it is a rigorous proof.

-Neil

I agree with Dr. Logic actually. It is another way of putting what I was saying.

It is a nice thing to talk about theoretical concepts like “grounding”, but once again how is it useful for reasoning about the actual behavior of humans? I have brought many examples, including the conduct of Catholic Christians in France who would presumably BELIEVE that there was a well-grounded, absolute, moral standard, and as you can see, they still went astray.

So I would like to ask about the “missing link in the chain” – namely, how does all this theory about grounding morality etc. actually have any effect on people’s actual actions? It might be a nice theory and we can talk about it, but specifically excluding all practical aspects of morality in the thread seems tome more of a device of rhetoric rather than a way to find practical solutions.

What is the goal of Neil’s line of questioning?

So, logic is dl’s most basic proposition, then. Or take them both together: logic and rationality, although I think logic comes first, right? To be rational, to reason properly, you must use logic, or to be more precise ‘the laws of logic’. Are these laws material or immaterial? From where do the laws of logic arise, just floating out there in the ether? I would gather that dl would not agree with that, but would say something along the lines of ‘the laws of logic are conventions agreed upon by man’. He ‘assumes’ the laws of logic, taking for granted that we all agree upon them, but has no justification for them within his own professed worldview of atheism. How ‘rational’ is that?

Steve,
You ask

If the Platonic forms ‘are’ the ultimate standard, and these are impersonal by definition, then where does ‘personality’ come from?

Right! That’s why I wrote in Comment #10:

I would appeal to the idea that it would be extremely odd for the personal (human beings) to come from the impersonal (the Forms). I think this is a very good argument, but I’m not sure it is a rigorous proof.

If I were an atheist, I think I would avoid this argument by claiming that “personality” is an ill-defined concept or that it is an epiphenomenon like “consciousness” that is merely a function of matter. I don’t think this is a good answer, but it’s the best rebuttal I can think of. Anyone want to take a stab at avoiding this argument?

-Neil

Neil,
Sure, ‘avoid’ is the key word there I think, because he doesn’t ‘live’ as if personality is a function of matter. He ‘lives’ as if love, justice, beauty, and all the things that make up personality, have ‘real’ meaning, above and beyond what just comes out as a result of chemical reactions in his brain. He is thus inconsistent from within his professed worldview of philosophical naturalism/materialism (nature or matter is ‘all’ there is) and thus irrational. For atheism to be a ‘rational’ worldview, the atheist must live and act consistent within it, and he is unable to do so.

Steve: I hear ya man. It’s too bad you don’t want to set the record straight about the “true” Christianity on a Christian blog. If I am mistaken in my understanding of Christianity, but you understand them well, why take the time to explain what Christianity’s actual views are, on the topics I have presented? After all I have explained to you my point of view in the previous thread, in quite some detail, even though your request was for my entire “worldview”, and mine is simply on a couple issues.

Yes, I am hopelessly naive, and an “atheist” according to you. I’ve “won” against a cartoon version of Christian beliefs about the Holy Spirit. In fact, let me actually fully outline the straw man beliefs about the Holy Spirit that I have been attacking, so you know how naive they are. The naive version of Christianity that I am attacking believes the Holy spirit’s divine functions are:

1. Conviction of sin. The Holy Spirit acts to convince the unredeemed person both of the sinfulness of their actions, and of their moral standing as sinners before God.

2. Bringing to conversion. The action of the Holy Spirit is seen as an essential part of the bringing of the person to the Christian faith. The new believer is “born again of the Spirit”.

3. Enabling the Christian life. The Holy Spirit is believed to dwell in the individual believers and enable them to live a righteous and faithful life.

4. As a comforter or Paraclete, one who intercedes, or supports or acts as an advocate, particularly in times of trial.

5. Inspiration and interpretation of scripture. The Holy Spirit both inspires the writing of the scriptures and interprets them to the Christian and/or church.

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Spirit_(Christianity)#Mainstream_doctrines)

I can understand why you think my continued asking of how these things were happening in and around France with the persecution of the Huguenots by the Catholics would be a straw man argument. The answer is simple: “people are not perfect.” Why do I continue arguing against such a complete and informative answer? Because I would like to know in what sense 1 – 5 are true. I get it, I am not sophisticated enough to understand how they are true in the sense they were intended to be believed by mainstream christian Churches. I am way too literal minded in my interpretations.

So at least, can you admit that my crime is taking things too literally, when “clearly” there is a non straw man Christianity which You believe, but are unwilling to lift a finger to describe in any significant detail such as the one I have been asking for?

By the way, in my dialogues, Tom is not Person B. YOU ARE.

Tom,
Here’s another thought I had. My previous argument is clearly most applicable to an atheist involved in a public debate, because he has already implicitly committed himself to persuading his audience. But I recently had a personal conversation with an atheist about this same issue. He rightly observed that he did not believe it important to engage in a debate and agreed that believing the truth was neither good nor obligatory. Indeed, that was the very reason he cited for not caring to convince others of his views. In this case, what use is the argument about the objective value of truth?

Here’s my thought. Ask your friend what he does value, from a purely pragmatic, subjective perspective. If he had to choose between truth and personal happiness, which would he choose? I suspect that most relativists would choose personal happiness over truth since they have already admitted that truth is not objectively good and they generally believe truth for the sake of future personal happiness (i.e. believing in gravity is useful in avoiding death).

If he does choose personal happiness, then ask him why he does not believe that God exists? Is it because there is not enough evidence to prove that God actually exists or because God does not make Him happy? If he is foolish enough to say that He disbelieves because God does not make him happy, point out that God does exist and that he is under moral obligation to serve God whether or not it makes him happy. From there, a simple gospel presentation would easily follow. However, it is far more likely that he will say that there is not nearly enough evidence to convince him that God does exist.

In that case, ask him what his emotional response is to the idea that God requires and deserves our complete obediance, love, and worship. If Jesus appeared to him in an undeniable way and told him that the Bible was completely true: that he was a sinner in need of forgiveness, that Jesus had purchased that forgiveness on the cross, and that he must repent, believe, and serve Jesus for the rest of his life, what would be his emotional response? Would he be overjoyed and run out to tell all his friends and family about the gospel? Of course not. The very idea of submitting fully to God and worshipping him completely is distasteful to him (and frankly to all of us, if we’re honest about it; that’s the terrible nature of sin).

But what is the implication of this thought experiment? He has already asserted that believing the truth is not good or obligatory. He has also said that there is not enough evidence for him to believe in God. But if there were enough evidence to completely convince him of the truth of God’s existence, he has already admitted that his ultimate goal is happiness, not truth. He would continue to disbelieve in God, regardless of the evidence because God does not make him happy. Ought he then to complain about the absence of evidence for God when he has already established that he will not listen to it?

The goal of this approach is to show the person that the fundamental obstacle to faith is not the lack of evidence, but the hardness of our hearts. We do not believe because we do not want to believe. It really does take God to change our hearts to even want to seek him. I think this is a very helpful approach both to disarming objections about insufficient evidence and pointing to the deeper reality of our heart’s orientation.

Thoughts?
-Neil

I’d just like to comment at the close how interesting it was to see that no one actually seemed to disagree with this thesis: that atheism provides no objective grounds for the value of or our obligation to believe the truth. In fact, most people were perfectly willing to grant this point! If that is indicative of the prevailing belief of atheists, then I would say that this argument has a tremendous apologetic significance.

One quibble, I wouldn’t call it a moral obligation. Epistemic is better, doxastic would be fine too, but moral? Seems a bit much. Anyways, I think atheists have no problem with handling this problem.

Let’s set up some common ground, first the atheist can admit that there are thoughts/propositions, whatever sentences serve to express. If you’re familiar with Frege, then that’s what I’m getting at. Both thoughts and sentences are part of a broader class of things, which I’ll refer to as representations. Representations are anything which can be bearers of truth.

If you think that atheists can’t help themselves to beliefs, thoughts and the like, then I’m not entirely sure if you’re being charitable to the point of being able to have a discussion with an atheist on these matters.

Believing is an attitude we can hold toward propositions. So the object of a belief is a proposition, and propositions can be a bearer of a truth value. What role do beliefs play in our cognitive life? They are used to accurately construe the world in order to facilitate our engagement with the world.

Now what is truth? If you think truth is just what obtains when a representation accurately represents the world, then we’re done. If you think that one ought to believe things which are false, you’re just not believing any more. We ought to believe only those things which are true, since that satisfies the cognitive role played by belief.

This isn’t totally Frege, but I really don’t see how any of the above would be problematic for an atheist to endorse. In fact you could adopt it to other inflationary accounts of truth.

Anyways, you might object that this isn’t capturing the moral force, but really, you think that someone who has a false belief is doing something morally wrong? That’s pretty bizarre.

Sort of. I was careful to say that atheism cannot ground truth as an objective value and obligation because I think WLC is right in recognizing that moral obligations can only be grounded in a personal authority. However, one might ground the objective value of truth in a realm of Platonic forms and still be an atheist, but not a naturalist.

None of what I’ve written above strikes me as anti-naturalist. But perhaps that’s because naturalism is a fairly nebulous doctrine. I’d self identify as a naturalist, and I don’t think anything above is inconsistent with my philosophical views.

In any case, there are many philosophers who are self-avowed naturalists who have been writing on these issues for the past half-century or so. Pretty much since Frege, Tarski and Russell. To assume that they can’t account for the normative force of truth without any discussion of the vast recent work on it strikes me as radically uncharitable.

There’s a lot of material here, and I’ll admit that many public atheists are sloppy on this point, but that’s no reason to think that these threads have given good reason to think that atheists can’t account for the normative force of truth.

If you’re familiar with analytic philosophy, and contemporary philosophical logic, I can give you some recommendations. Obviously there’s Russell, Wittgenstein, Tarski, Carnap and Quine. More contemporary stuff would be Hartry Field, for just one example of a physicalist who has extensively worked on truth, and has argued that physicalists can account for the normative force of truth. I don’t think Field’s analysis is water tight, but naturalism isn’t silent on these issues.

It’s technical stuff, but you’ve raised a technical question. You’ve cited WLC favorably, and in part that’s because he works hard on the philosophical issues, right?* To do apologetics right, especially on this point, you have to do the homework.

*I think Craig doesn’t do enough hard work, and actually makes some blatent misrepresentations in his debates, but that’s an aside.

Greg,
Regarding your second comment, I agree with Tom that a discussion of the divinity of Jesus will probably be helpful. However, let me a different aspect of your response. You write

If GOD appeared to me in an undeniable way and told me what to do, I would be very happy to do it! Jews live for this reason every day.

If Jesus would do it, I would immediately ask him to talk with me for a day or two, and explain to me how God who created everything told me to not serve anyone but Him, and here is Jesus a man telling me serve Jesus. I would have a lot of questions for Jesus if he ever appeared in front of me.

Understood. So let me rephrase my statement.
“If God appeared to you in an undeniable way and told you that the Bible was completely true: that you were a sinner in need of forgiveness, that Jesus had purchased that forgiveness on the cross, and that you must repent, believe, and serve Jesus for the rest of his life, what would be your emotional response?”

Note the emphasis on emotional, and then answer my original question: would you be overjoyed and run out to tell all your friends and family about the gospel? Would you fall to your knees in grateful wonder? Would you happily surrender the rest of your life to following Jesus? Even though I absolutely do believe that Christianity is objectively true, I would have to ‘no’ to most these questions. Tragically and inexcusably, I get terribly threatened when God gets ‘too close’ or is a little ‘too real’, when he reveals himself to be what the OT calls ‘a living God.’ All I am trying to show you is the desperate sickness of our hearts. Deep in the heart of every human is a desperate desire to be rid of God and to live for ourselves. We may claim that the obstacles to our belief are purely intellectual, but that is simply not true. There may be intellectual obtacles, but there is always a fundamental heart issue that God needs to overcome.

-Neil

Greg,

In all honestly, although some of your questions were good ones, others indicate that you have some serious misconceptions about Christian theology (i.e. “I have not heard a good explanation as to what happened to all the famous and righteous Jews of the OT” – See Romans 4 for instance). But I want to return to the questions I started with. You say that you agree that you are a sinner. Good!

But my two subsequent questions were:

“To what degree are you a sinner? Do you mostly conform to God’s standards or not?”

and

“If God appeared to you in an undeniable way and told you that the Bible was completely true: that you were a sinner in need of forgiveness, that Jesus had purchased that forgiveness on the cross, and that you must repent, believe, and serve Jesus for the rest of his life, what would be your emotional response?”

Let’s start with these questions before wandering off into other areas, not because these other areas are totally unimportant, but because they have no bearing on whether you need a Savior. If you do not think you need a Savior, then you can immediately reject Jesus without every knowing or caring whether Christians ought to light a fire on the Sabbath.

-Neil

I did want to add, though: thanks, lambda.calc for those insights. I’m not a professional philosopher, and though I’m pretty well-read, there is plenty of literature out there I haven’t studied. I don’t mind being open about that.

No worries. Like I said this is a pretty technical area, so if you’re planning on looking into the literature on truth, send me an email detailing your comfort level on things like formal logic, analytic philosophy and philosophy of language. Russell’s Problems of Philosophy has an accessible chapter, but it’s not really a mature development of his views. Oh, and while I recommend reading Wittgenstein’s Tractatus it can be a tad slippery.

The main thrust of your comment is that it’s inappropriate to think of a moral dimension to believing the truth. Obviously there is an epistemic or doxastic dimension to the obligation question; but does that mean there is no moral dimension? And does it mean that Neil’s argument is undermined in general? That’s what I’ll be thinking through in the meantime.

Sure, I take it we can agree that there are other dimensions of normativity. And that some are independent of morality. I’d like to say that epistemology is at least one independent one, with language use being another. Neil’s challenge was whether or not we could account for the obligation to believe the truth. While the previous thread on this point cast it a distinctly moral claim, I don’t see how it is. Unless of course, you collapse all value to moral value.

Also: there are at least two ways to state the problem: what kind of obligation do we have to believe the truth? and what kind of obligation do we have to pursue the truth? I’ve been phrasing it the second way in most of my contribution to this discussion, and I think the moral dimension arguably applies there. But I’ll be thinking about this more

So, I think providing an account of the cognitive role of belief can suffice for your first question. That is, it’s a distinctively doxastic norm: the obligation to believe the truth is grounded in the nature of the attitude of belief. Suppose I were to mistakenly believe that New York is on the coast of the Pacific, is that a moral failure on my part?

Second question, are we obliged to pursue the truth? I think it’s obvious that we are not obliged to pursue the truth simpliciter, since I could just sit around proving tautologies to satisfy that obligation. Or you could memorize the phone book. So if that’s all that is meant by inherent value to the truth, then we’re barking up the wrong tree, since it seems fairly evident that there’s no value in truths of this sort.

Why pursue any truth though? Here’s the simplest case. I desire to have some hot, fresh, coffee. If my belief that my coffee mug contains fresh coffee is erroneous, then I won’t get the coffee I desired. We care about truth insofar as it facilitates our interaction with the world. My actions are predicated on my beliefs.

Yes, what is truth? How does one arrive at a system of universal interpretive principles that can relate particular thoughts or facts to one another? Within what context does one synthesize his knowledge into a coherent system? Where does one acquire the broader context for propositions, paragraphs of thought, large-scale judgments, and ultimate conclusions about reality? What ‘are’ those things that are true satisfying the cognitive role of belief? As a naturalist, what are your thoughts lc?

You have a good point. Please don’t take the following as overtly confrontational, but I think you have to give the naturalist a bit of ground to stand on.

Think about the dialectic. The theist goes “Hey atheist, why should we believe true things?” And then the atheist offers their reply in terms of beliefs and things which bear truth-values. The theist says “Well that’s silly, since you can’t provide an account of beliefs or truth values”.

Kind of strikes me as being a discussion killer, right?

Anyways, the exciting bit to naturalism is that all of these are good questions and point towards a very serious research program in philosophy of mind and language.

We can go really far afield if you like, but I can briefly sketch my own views, however I’m afraid that’d rely on some terribly speculative psychology on my part.

So I’m happy to dispense with the term ‘moral’. The question for me is whether ‘beleiving the truth’ is valuable or obligatory in an unconditional way which I am not free to “opt out” of. If it is valuable or obligatory in any conditional way, then I am always free to reject the conditions. What do yo think?

I think the norm (“You should believe/care about believing truths”) is grounded in a non-conditional way. Saying that you should believe falsehoods is analogous to saying you should do wrong things. See my initial post in this thread which does that in a fairly direct way.

Now is there anything intrinsically valuable about believing the truth? I don’t think so. If there were, you could just sit down and memorize the phone-book right? Or pull out some log tables and get memorizing.

Well, but wait a minute. Why do I have to give him some ground to stand on? I have to stand on his ground, but he’s unwilling to stand on my ground? I’m not sure I understand what you’re proposing here? I don’t see how the dialectic you propose answers that. In other words, I have to adhere to his set of presuppositions to convince him that my set of presuppositions are correct? But that’s not the issue though, is it? The question behind the question is whose set of presuppositions are the right place to start from, right?

You don’t have to give the atheist any common ground, but that’d be radically uncharitable. I guess I wasn’t particularly clear, so I’ll try again at stating the issue. I’m not suggesting that you have to adopt atheist presuppositions. And I’m not suggesting that the atheist abandon his position. What I am suggesting is that the theist, in asking the atheist to defend the normative role that truth seems to presuppose that the atheist can talk about these things. It’s a principle of charity.

If you think that atheists can’t account for the normativity of truth, then let them at least be able to talk about truth, and belief, and truth-bearers. Otherwise, what’s the point of starting the debate at the level of the normativity of truth? Why not just debate at the level of whether or not belief makes sense under naturalism?

(Edit: An aside Neil, I’ll respond to you later, this is interesting but I’m afraid I don’t have all day to sit and update.)

Hi Neil,
Was the context of this proposed question not something along the lines of the proselytizing atheist who says “you ought not believe in God because He doesn’t exist and you ought not hold false beliefs”?

I have to say, this entire thread is fascinating.

Good job, Neil, who seems to have originated this line of thought (at least on this site). I’ll really have to think about this.

Charlie @51

It seems obvious that I have done a right thing holding a false belief.

This is sloppy. False beliefs can motivate you to act rightly. Nothing in my initial post is inconsistent with that.

If this is merely a semantic argument that says, in effect, that I cannot believe a proposition that I know to be false, then, of course, I agree.

Please see my initial post in the thread, my comments were an allusion to that argument.

To give a simple example borrowed from Sam Harris, let’s say that we consider a mother whose young child has just died. I would say that she probably has a overpowering desire to be comforted. Now if she encounters the naturalistic “truth” that “Your child is gone forever,” does it have any value for her? Is she in any way obligated to believe this statement simply because the naturalist claims it is true? If truth is only valuable insofar as it helps her meet her desires, then she would rightly reject believing this statement in favor of some other more pleasant belief.

This example is largely misses the point, since it’s not my claim that we should believe things only for their instrumental value. My claim is that belief is the attitude we take towards things which represent the world accurately, and that if we take truth to be that which obtains when a representation corresponds with reality, then it follows pretty handily that we should believe true representations. Reread my initial post in the thread if you don’t get this.

Lets turn this around for a second, how would a Christian respond to this question, “Why should I believe things that are true?” Recalling my religious education when I was younger as a Lutheran, there weren’t any direct commandments on this point, so it seems like a fair question, right?

And here’s a second one: since it seems that your answer is that the truth is intrinsically motivating, do you really think that my memorizing a log table is just as good as my learning truths about physics?

lambda.calc,

Regarding the point I was attempting to make about charity there seems to be a good deal of confusion. Steve railed against my use of truth, and truth bearers in my account. I suggested that if we want to talk about whether or not truth bearers are plausible under naturalism, that’d be a different debate.

I’m not sure why this point is so hard to communicate. But I’ve reached my limit for being able to restate this any more clearly. Neil, your last post misses the point in a spectacular fashion.

You are correct, I misunderstood what you were claiming. I had thought that you had admitted that naturalists cannot explain the normativity of truth and argued that Christians should still allow naturalists to talk about things for which they can explain, lest the Christian act unchariably. Instead, you were merely claiming that the Christian needs to allow the naturalists to attempt to explain the normativity of truth and cannot merely cut the naturalists off completely at the very outset. I agree, and apologize for the confusion.

-Neil

lambda.calc:
I admitted that we’ll have to provide some story about this, but that to rule out an atheists ability to respond to the initial questions on those grounds is uncharitable.

Hi lc,
You keep using the word ‘uncharitable’ without specifying what reason I should have to be ‘charitable’ or act ‘uncharitably’ as if we have a common understanding of this word. You do this without us even beginning our dialog or debate on the the existence or non-existence of God. I’m not ruling out an atheist’s ability to ‘state’ propositions. But by definition a proposition asserts that something is the case or it asserts that something is not. We can affirm or deny propositions, but every proposition is either true or false. What I am trying to get you to see and acknowledge or inform me: ‘What are the atheist’s ‘stated’ propositions’? What are those core ‘stated’ propositions that you as a naturalist, and/or an atheist, willing to ‘state’ so that we may determine the truth or falsity of your claims?

Neil Shenvi:
Instead, you were merely claiming that the Christian needs to allow the naturalists to attempt to explain the normativity of truth and cannot merely cut the naturalists off completely at the very outset.

Well sure, but he must do it within his ‘system’ and when he strays outside his ‘system’ and borrows from the Judeo-Christian ‘system’, (like using the words ‘charitable’ perhaps) we must call him on it and point out that he has not ‘stayed’ within his ‘system’, no?

‘Why should I believe things are true’?

Are you serious? Qualify the question. Is one able to live in this world without knowledge that certain things are true and we better realize that fact before we end up dead? It’s a red-herring question and should be treated as such.

Steve,
I think lambda_calc actually asked:

Lets turn this around for a second, how would a Christian respond to this question, “Why should I believe things that are true?” Recalling my religious education when I was younger as a Lutheran, there weren’t any direct commandments on this point, so it seems like a fair question, right?

So he is agreeing that some propositions are true and others are false. He is just asking us the same question that we are asking him: can Christians ground the value of or obligation to believe truth? I think that’s a fair question to ask, but I think it is one that the Bible answers. Because God knows and loves truth, it is good. And because God commands us to know and love truth (some truth, not all truth, obviously), it is obligatory.

-Neil

Neil,

But he is not being inconsistent if he is asking us to be charitable on the basis of our Christianity.

Just to throw this out there: If I oppose your Christianity, is there a double standard if I tell you ‘You should be charitable, that’s what your religion teaches!’ and also ‘You shouldn’t do X even if your religion teaches it, I reject it!’?

Neil said,
For instance, if I am committing adultery, it is perfectly reasonable for my atheist friend to point out that my behavior is inconsistent with my professed Christianity. It makes no sense for me to reply “On atheism, there is nothing wrong with adultery. Therefore, you have no right to call me inconsistent.”

Neil,
I can see where Holo has such frustration. He can certainly point it out, but from within his own ‘system’ and set of presuppositions, he can’t even say that ‘adultery’ is wrong because his ‘system’ is amoral. There is no right or wrong, only what is. It’s hypocrisy to claim that I’m not living up to the standards of my set of presuppositions, when he can’t and is unable to live up to his own.

Neil: You asked me if I am a sinner. I answered you about old testament law, and who it was given to, etc.

If you answer yes, then my next question would be: “To what degree are you a sinner?

Well, I think that to enable me to answer this question, you must first tell me what exactly is sin and what is not. Perhaps I am not a sinner in any significant degree whatsoever. Who knows. To what degree are you conforming with the will of the Green Man of the Andromeda Galaxy? I would have to know what exactly that entails, wouldn’t I? So it’s up to you to tell me more about what constitutes sin and what doesn’t.

Steve Drake: your reasoning seems to be faulty. All atheists are hypocrites, according to you? Why? Can you point out a group of people who are never hypocrites?

Hi Greg,
It seems we begin again, my e-friend. I guess if you call my reasoning faulty, I can call your reasoning faulty, as well, right? Turn about, fair play, and all that, right?

Everyone is a hypocrite, in the sense that we do not live up to the standards that we hold others accountable to.

Are you saying you’re ‘not’ a hypocrite, Greg?

Steve: I am saying that your comment, whose chief point is to say “all atheists are hypocrites” implies that this is somehow an important fact. If everyone is a hypocrite, then why is it interesting that all atheists are hypocrites? Are you saying all religious people are not? What was your reason for saying all atheists are hypocrites?

Steve: I would be glad to do so if you would define exactly what you mean by a hypocrite. Since I maintain that everyone is a hypocrite in some areas, therefore I too am one. But perhaps you have some special definition you would like to use, like “see, Greg, why should I listen to you, you are a hypocrite — whereas I am not”. I want to know what it is you are asking

It leaves us in a normal place. We are in the year 2011. We are human. Can you at least consider the possibility that there were never any of the magical events described in the Bible? After all, is it possible that just as you do not believe Greek legends, and you don’t believe the Oracle at Delphi really had Apollo’s prophecies, similarly it might just be that the world was always normal, like it is today?

In this case, we don’t have to worry about not living up to God’s expectations, since we don’t know if what they are. Do you live up to the Universe’s expectations? Do you think you would be too worried about this?

HI Greg,
Well, I would want to know what the Universe’s expectations of me are, right? What do you think the Universe’s expectations are of you? Since we’re both male and human, if you tell me, then maybe I can follow what you think are the Universe’s expectations of you are.

So doctor(logic):
If I as a moral realist believe in the NSVP, does that make me delusional, in your opinion?

Steve – that’s the point. We don’t know. So, what is it that you think we should follow – and why? (The atheist doesn’t know. What about you?)

Well, if you know what the Universe wants from us, do tell. And by the way, Steve, you haven’t answered my question.

Greg,
As a Christian, I would refer to Jesus’ statement that the whole of man’s moral duty is summarized as: “Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself”. This is God’s ultimate moral standard. However, as a Christian, I would also affirm that human beings have a direct perception of God’s moral standard to various degrees, which is why I can refer you to Judaism, Islam, atheistic ethicists or even to your own moral standards for at least indication of your moral failure. Although I think Jesus’ standard is the surest way to gain a knowledge of your condition, since you reject this standard I would urge you to consider others.

Why not read my essay? If you’d like to talk about it, we can.

P.S. I’m headed to Princeton reunions, so I might be out of touch. Don’t take it personally!

Neil: In that case, I would say that is very straightforward once one knows that God exists.

I will try to read your essay soon. Just trying to finish up a few things…

Loving God with all your heart and soul, and loving your neighbor as yourself, are only the beginning. These are the basics. Personally I would say it would make a person extremely happy to do this. I don’t understand why Christians say there is no one would want to do this. Well, I should qualify that statement: we don’t know if Jesus really meant it 100% literally. We also don’t know that Jesus is God. Actually, Jesus’ statement is found in the book Pirkei Avot, which is “sayings of the fathers”. Hillel the elder taught this very idea hundreds of years before him, but it is just the beginning. He taught it to gentiles. The whole Torah explains HOW to follow the commandments, and Christians ignore this part.

I believe I have made my questions very clear. Go and read them, and answer them. You are the one who complained that I don’t answer questions.

Do you want me to repeat my questions again? Do you want me to repeat my answer again?

Here are the questions one more time:

1) do you WORRY about living up to the Universe’s expectations?

2) So, what is it that you think we should follow – and why? (The atheist doesn’t know. What about you?)

Would you like to tell us anything about your position?

Great, Steve! I think your last comment was very productive. Let me ask you a couple questions about it:

1) You said that you don’t know what the Universe wants from you, and also that you don’t worry about living up to its expectations. Do you think that you don’t worry about living up to its expectations, in large part BECAUSE you don’t know what it expects from you?

2) You have answered what you think we should follow. Now the crucial question: Why?

The atheist does not know what God wants from him. So I hope you can see why the atheist is not worried about not living up to God’s expectations.

Oh, okay.

1) Well, first of all, aren’t you assuming that there is a Creator who speaks and gives directives as to your behavior? And even if there is, how do you know what this Creator has spoken? And more importantly, how can you convince the atheist that this has happened?

If you can prove this to atheists, then I think you will convert many of them.

2) Okay I guess I am not clear what it means to be saved. I will assume you mean saved from an eternity in hell. Are you saying that those people (such as King David, and Abraham) who did not confess with his mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believed in his heart that God raised him from the dead, are not saved? Are you telling us that they are — God forbid — spending an eternity in hell according to your belief system?

Hi Greg,
1) I’m not assuming anything except what you asked me to answer. You asked about the Universe’s expectations. I answered accordingly.

2) What does it mean to be ‘saved’? The $64,000 dollar question, right? Wow, that’s a tough one, you’ve got some tough questions my friend. It really goes back to your Torah, Gen. 3:15, I think, where the promise of a Seed would come to crush (bruise) the serpent’s head. I’m not sure how Judaism takes this verse, maybe you can help me there. But, isn’t this the verse (among others I presume) that Judaism believes a promised Messiah will come? Abraham in ‘faith’ looked forward to that promised Seed, so did King David, so no, I would not say that they are spending an eternity in hell, but that like all those who looked forward in ‘faith’ to that promised Seed of Gen. 3:15 and those of us since the Cross who in ‘faith’ look back to the fulfillment of Jesus the Christ as that promised Seed are ‘saved’.

Steve:

1) Are you not worried about not living up to what the Universe expects from you, because you don’t know what the Universe expects from you?

2) Right, but an atheist doesn’t believe your premises. What if the atheist doesn’t simply accept that the Torah is true? You don’t, for example, believe Ragnarok will happen, despite Norse mythology talking about it very clearly?

lambda.calc – here is a good illustration of what I think … should one laugh at a funny joke because it is morally right? I think the word “should” in that sentence implies some sort of absolute obligation. But even if such an obligation didn’t exist, many people would laugh at a funny joke. We are built that way. Similarly with believing the truth.

Samuel Lutwidge Dodgeson, Alice in Wonderland, verses 5992-5993:

“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Steve:

1) What makes you think I am confusing them?

2) Is there any way for you to convince the atheist that he should become a Christian?

lambda.calc,

From my reading it seems that Aquinas related normative claims (including moral claims) back to the inherent nature and ends of things. You include similar ideas in your argument when you refer to the “nature of belief”, the “role of belief”. I’m not a philosopher so I’m not sure of the different meanings some of the terms might have. I was wondering what you mean when you use these words and how that might differ from the sense that Aquinas might use them?

Melissa,

From my reading it seems that Aquinas related normative claims (including moral claims) back to the inherent nature and ends of things. You include similar ideas in your argument when you refer to the “nature of belief”, the “role of belief”. I’m not a philosopher so I’m not sure of the different meanings some of the terms might have. I was wondering what you mean when you use these words and how that might differ from the sense that Aquinas might use them?”

Oddly enough, there’s a stream of thought in contemporary metaethics (well, maybe more like recent metaethics) which relies on the Aristotelian notions that Aquinas picked up on. One interesting thing that’s worth noting is that these metaethical views are independent of Christianity. Philippa Foot has a great little book called Natural Goodness which deals with these issues.

The best part is the following: this is mainstream naturalism. Though most Christian apologists just seem to miss out on this aspect of contemporary ethics.

It’s certainly one way to go, but it’s not quite what I had in mind.

By a cognitive role, all I mean is just what difference having the capacity to believe makes for us, as we go about our various day to day mental life. Suppose I couldn’t believe things, at all. What difference does that make for us? It seems evident that I couldn’t consider ways that representations (thoughts, propositions, sentences) relate to the world in a very basic way: that the representation gets the world the right way around. This way just seems to be what we usually mean by truth. So we should believe things which are true, just because belief is a very basic and serious way of considering truth bearers as true.

Hi Greg,
Gotta go. Catch up with you tomorrow.

Steve: cool, see you tomorow.

responses to your questions:

Hi Greg,
1)What is the distinction between “Universe”, and a transcendent, personal, immanent “God”? I don’t know, you tell me, Greg, do we need to have an English lesson?

what?? I havent said that to you. I said, “What makes YOU think I am CONFUSING them?”

2) ‘Is there any way for me to convince the atheist that he should become a Christian’?

I can’t believe you’re serious by asking this question. I could simply ask the same of the atheist, and whether there’s ‘any’ way he could convince that I should become an atheist. It’s not my job to ‘convince’ anyone, let alone you, Greg, to become a Christian. As a Christian, I am exhorted to ‘defend’ or give an apologia, for the hope that is within me. That’s all. It is the role of the Holy Spirit as the Third Person of the Trinity to ‘quicken’ the mind to see the ‘truthfulness’ of the revelation of God.

Jesus tells you to go and PREACH the gospel to everyone

“Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15).

“The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore, beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest (Matt. 9:37-38).

“Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ … how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Rom. 10:17,14).

“And thus I aspired to preach the Gospel, not where Christ was already named, that I might not build upon another man’s foundation; but as it is written, ‘They that had no news of Him shall see, and they who have not heard shall understand’” (Rom. 15:20-21).

This refers to unbelievers. So how do you plan to convince them?

Tom,

God loves truth because God is true. It is his nature. It is not a matter of having reasons; it is who he is.

Help me understand this, because quite frankly it looks like nonsense.

The first sentence appears to be a category error. Normally when we use ‘is true’ we mean it as a predicate, right? Predicates usually have specific domains where it makes sense to apply them. God doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing which falls into the domain that truth is applicable to, at least in the sense of the first instance in which we use a cognate of truth in that sentence.

There are other ways that we use true (eg. truing a wheel), but they don’t relate to truth. And they don’t seem to apply to God.

One reason folks make errors of this sort is to make use of metaphor, but if “God is true” is a metaphor, then surely it shouldn’t actually be taken to do any grounding, in the sense which Neil talks about.

DL,

but rather to suggest to the subjectivist that he would have to give up valuing truth if he failed to accept realism.

Where does Neil say that? As near as I can tell, Neil was arguing that there is no binding moral obligation to pursue or value the truth on atheism. That doesn’t seem to rule out some subjectivist arbitrarily declaring ‘I value truth!’ They can value whatever they want.

Gregory Magarshak @ 124:
1) I said, “What makes YOU think I am CONFUSING them?”

In fact, you ‘do’ seem to be confusing them. What is your conception of the Judeo-Christian God, and how do you ‘know’ that?

Gregory Magarshak:
2) Jesus tells you to go and PREACH the gospel to everyone. This refers to unbelievers. So how do you plan to convince them?

Greg, I’m repeating myself. I’ve told you that it is not my job to ‘convince’ anyone; that is the role of the Holy Spirit. When missionaries go, when I go, into the ‘world’ to preach the Gospel, we are exhorted to proclaim the solution to man’s sin problem in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. To ‘sanctify’ Jesus the Christ as ‘Lord’ in the heart (this is first and entails a relinquishing of my autonomous thinking and nature for that of Jesus the Christ and the revelation in His Word), and be ready to give an apologia [an apologetic, a defense], to every one who asks, of the hope that is within me, with gentleness and reverence (1 Pet. 3:15).

Scripture also exhorts me ‘not’ to answer a fool according to his folly, lest I be like him, but to answer a fool as his folly ‘deserves’, lest he be wise in his own eyes (Prov.26:4-5).

Tom,

You distinguish a behavioral approach from something else. What? A rational or theoretical approach? There’s nothing lacking with subjectivism on theoretical grounds.

As for mining past threads, take a look at this post you wrote.

But the moral side still wants to speak. If it hears of a gay man being murdered for being gay, it tears off the gag and screams, “that’s wrong!” The metaphysical side will be quick or slow to re-apply the gag, depending on how careful the person is to protect his or her metaphysics; for when the moral side screams, “that’s wrong!” that’s when the metaphysical beliefs are most in danger.

You’re saying that my metaphysical beliefs gag me when I want to speak up about my moral beliefs. The implication being that speaking out about my values is contradicting my metaphysical beliefs. This is precisely the NSVP argument applied to the subjectivist position.

Oh, and please don’t pretend that wasn’t the implication.

SteveK said:

We’ve seen our fair share of ‘hopeless hypotheseses’ peddled on this blog disguised as truth. Moral relativism is one of my favorites because nobody lives as if it were really true.

Again, implication that preferring to act in accordance with one’s own values rather than the values of others is inconsistent (by the NSVP).

Indeed, MedicineMan clarifies:

I think that SteveK’s making the point that no moral relativist really lives as though right and wrong are totally subjective. There will always be some point at which you will consider some action or attitude as “immoral”.

There are plenty of people who live as though moral relativism was true for them, but very very few who actually live as though it was legitimately true for everyone.

NSVP, plain and simple.

Here’s a juicy one (http://tinyurl.com/4329cm2):

Next time, for example, you see a lone student rolled over by a tank in Tian An Men square, if you feel any revulsion toward it, just say, “Whoops, I’m wrong; actually, I’m so glad for the moral standards of the Chinese leadership.” (Don’t you dare judge them by your irrelevant American standards!) When Iraqis blow up Iraqis with IEDs (that’s the main form of violence happening there now), just recognize they’re doing exactly what’s right for them. When you see video of the Holocaust, just remember that everywhere on this planet and at every time throughout history, societies have always lived on an equally high plane of following their local morality, and be grateful for humanity’s fine and spotless history, apart from a few renegades that each culture has to put up with.

Remember that if you disapprove at all, that’s just an accident of where and when you were born, and you have no standing to disagree with any of it.

If you’re okay with that, then you can be a consistent relativist. As for me, that just doesn’t make sense and I can’t do that.

Emphasis mine. Either you mean no objective standing (which is a pointless thing to say with regard to subjectivism), or you’re applying the NSVP.

lambda.calc,
I’ll respond to your comments about belief (which I really enjoyed and found extremeley interesting) in a second. Let me focus on your other comment:

As to the positive proposal, that certainly seems to be an interesting way of reading passages about bearing false testimony. Seems like it might be a bit of a stretch, but I’m by no means a biblical scholar.

First, I think that taking the command “thou shalt not bear false witness” to more broadly prohibit lying of any kind has a fairly long history (I think going back to St. Augustine; for modern examples, see John Piper or my current pastor J.D. Greear). Now I happen to disagree, which is why I separated specific prohibitions against ‘lying’ from prohibitions against ‘bearing false witness’. But second, I think this objection is immaterial. I listed numerous positive and negative commands which showed that the biblical God values and obligates truth. So even if you were to disagree that the prohibition against bearing false witnesses has any relevance to our view of truth, I think the many other passages I listed still valid.

Just some questions: Does God have reasons for loving truth? If so, why isn’t it the case that those reasons ground our obligation to the truth rather than God’s loving it? If not, were God to know and love falsehood, would it then be good?

Good question! However, I just read a very helpful essay on this very topic here. God has motivating reasons for commanding us to believe truth (believing the truth is consistent with his perfect nature). But God’s commands themselves are the constitutive reasons for our obligation to obey the truth. So God’s motivating reasons do not ground our obligation to obey the truth; rather, his commands ground this obligation. Does that help? Check out the essay to which I linked. It says it much more clearly than I did.

Regarding the last question, this is essentially the Euthyphro dilemma and I agree with Tom’s response. God is necessarily perfect, so God could no more command evil (or love falsehood) than a square could be round.

-Neil

Neil,

Good question! I just read an interesting article on this topic (Google: “Friday fallacy equivocation”). God’s motivating reasons for issuing the command for us to believe the truth are that truth is consistent with his perfect nature. However, these divine commands themselves are the constitutive reasons for our obligation to believe the truth. See the link above; it describes this far better than I did.

Finally, I think Tom gave a good answer to your last question, which is basically the Euthyphro Dilemma. God is necessarily perfect. So asking whether he could love falsehood is the same as asking whether a square could be round.

I don’t think I’ve equivocated, if that’s what you’re trying to imply. By the way, your google search recommendation turned up a plethora of results. The question is really, if those are motivating reasons for God, why can’t they be motivating reasons for us?

Charge of equivocation aside, here’s what you say:

God is necessarily perfect.

In order for this to be substantive, we need to have an independent notion of perfection. So when I ask “Why does God value the true?” and You respond “Because God is perfect.” So, what is it for something to be perfect? If it’s just for it to be God, then well, you’ve given me an empty tautology, which is no reason think that perfection is anything different from some stipulative property.

1) Steve, you are the one asserting that I am confusing them. I am asking you to back up that assertion. I do not think it is apparent I am confusing them at all, simply because I used the Universe as an example of something whose expectations you are NOT worried to live up to. That does not mean I am confusing the universe and God. It means that I have used the Universe as an example to make a point.

We have already established that you don’t know what the universe wants from you, AND that you aren’t worried about what the universe wants from you. But yet, with God, you are worried. So clearly, I think neither one of us thinks they are the same thing.

I wonder what makes YOU think I am confusing them.

In fact, you ‘do’ seem to be confusing them. What is your conception of the Judeo-Christian God, and how do you ‘know’ that?

To YOU, it may seem that way. I am asking why.

2)

Jesus tells you to go and PREACH the gospel to everyone. This refers to unbelievers. So how do you plan to convince them?

Greg, I’m repeating myself. I’ve told you that it is not my job to ‘convince’ anyone; that is the role of the Holy Spirit. When missionaries go, when I go, into the ‘world’ to preach the Gospel, we are exhorted to proclaim the solution to man’s sin problem in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. To ‘sanctify’ Jesus the Christ as ‘Lord’ in the heart (this is first and entails a relinquishing of my autonomous thinking and nature for that of Jesus the Christ and the revelation in His Word), and be ready to give an apologia [an apologetic, a defense], to every one who asks, of the hope that is within me, with gentleness and reverence (1 Pet. 3:15).

Scripture also exhorts me ‘not’ to answer a fool according to his folly, lest I be like him, but to answer a fool as his folly ‘deserves’, lest he be wise in his own eyes (Prov.26:4-5).

So anyone who automatically isn’t convinced by simple assertions is a fool?

Listen, the Talmud is absolutely true and authoritative. You must read it to find out how to interpret Bible Verses properly!

If I don’t give you any more reason to believe the above statement, and you simply don’t believe me, would I consider you a fool?

(Incidentally, I do have a lot of reasons to believe the above statement. And it concerns your own belief system. But you probably don’t care about the Talmud. Funny, that.)

If you think that convincing people is a matter of making assertions and quoting Bible verses to support them, then what will you do when they ask you, “well, how do we know any of this is true?” At that point you just throw up your hands and said, “well, I PREACHED the Gospel to you. You seem to be a fool. I will not cast my pearls before such swine as you. I hope the Holy Spirit works with you. GOOD LUCK!” and move on to the next person?

This is what Christ wanted? When someone asks you to back up your claims, to be convinced and converted, you just say “you are a fool”? Why then the pretense for all this rational discussion from you?

I think you can see why the atheist would remain unconvinced, if they ask a simple question like “okay I know WHAT you want me to believe. Now why should I believe it?” and you just call him a fool and walk away.

Steve, once again you are managing to derail a rational discussion. All the stuff that you accuse me of – not answering questions, ignoring questions, ignoring answers, etc. you do yourself.

You have several “tactics” to do this. One of your favorite is to take a direct and clear point, and mischaracterize it. When I write a slightly lengthy post addressing your mischaracterization, you write a short one-liner that basically comments on me or the discussion, ignores all my questions, and maybe throws in a couple ad homs like “you are a fool” or “you have a doctrine of despair”. Try to stay on topic yourself. This kind of stuff pisses Tom off. I am trying to be patient with you.

I will give just one example of this behavior before continuing with you:
I said:

1) You said that you don’t know what the Universe wants from you, and also that you don’t worry about living up to its expectations. Do you think that you don’t worry about living up to its expectations, in large part BECAUSE you don’t know what it expects from you?

You replied:

1) I think you keep confusing the “Universe” and a personal, omnipotent, omnipresent, and transcendent God. The two are not the same, so I’m a bit confused as to why you want me to answer your question as it relates to the “Universe”, when from the Judeo-Christian belief ‘system’ we should be talking about this personal, transcendent ‘God’.

I replied:

1) What makes you think I am confusing them?

You replied:

1)What is the distinction between “Universe”, and a transcendent, personal, immanent “God”? I don’t know, you tell me, Greg, do we need to have an English lesson?

Do you see how you start to throw personal insinuations an attacks, while completely “misunderstanding” and derailing the simple questions? Look at my questions. What does my question have to do with confusing God and the Universe? What does my question have to do with asserting they are the same? Nothing. There is very little logical content in your response, addressing what I said. Just vitriol.

Tom, I would ask you please to notice this, so you don’t blame me later if the discussion degenerates.

Now, once again:

We are very much not far afield. Let me give you the context. We already established, that

1) You do not care about the expectations of the Universe about you, and you do not know what those expectations are. I maintain that you don’t care about those expectations BECAUSE you don’t know what those expectations are.

2) On the other hand, the atheist doesn’t know about what God’s expectations of him are. Therefore, he is not concerned about being a sinner and engaging in sin (i.e. not living up to God’s expectations) for the same reason.

This should make you realize the main thing missing for the atheist: knowing what God’s expectations of him really are.

You said that you have no obligation to convince the atheist that God really has these expectations for him. You might even think he is a fool or swine. Fine.

So do you then admit that the atheist is no more convinced than if a scientologist showed up, told him a few things about Xenu blowing up atomic bombs and that we are all spirits called thetans, and then disappeared?

Why, then, do you think atheists try to “suppress the truth”? If all missionaries were like you, there would be no convincing argument that this is really the truth, just assertions that it is. To the atheist, it’s like a russian roulette. In the absence of rational discussion, can choose Islam, he can choose Christianity, he can stay an atheist.

So now, I will summarize the three questions:

1) Would you say that you aren’t worried about the Universe’s expectations of you, because you don’t know what they are or if they even exist? Or for some other reason (such as being extremely brave, or foolhardy).

2) Can you appreciate that you do not give atheists any convincing reason to believe that they should, as you say, “Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, so that you will be saved”?

3) If you simply tell them this, quote some Bible verses and walk away, how can you claim that atheists are “suppressing the truth”? While it may be the truth by accident, you refused to provide any convincing argument or support for it, and therefore, most humans would reject such non evident truths for that reason. This is not suppression – you do this all the time.

Greg

PS: Steve, please don’t do what I half expect you to, which is answer a long, detailed post which addresses your questions, with a short one which includes a personal attack, and fails to address my 3 numbered ones. It would be counterproductive to the discussion.

Steve: I think that is fair. However, I would like to point out that your question in #132 is not directly to the discussion and arose out of misunderstanding on YOUR part, when you thought that I was confusing the Universe with the Judeo-Christian God.

Do you realize now that I was not confusing the two? I was using the Universe as an example of something whose “expectations” of you you were not concerned about, nor did you know what they were. As such, is the reason for asking your question — namely, thinking I am confusing the Universe and God — eliminated? And therefore, perhaps we can table the question for another time so as not to get distracted in our current line of thought?

Do you understand my main point? Can you please answer my questions not in a perfunctory manner but in view of the main point I am making? If you do not understand the main thrust of what I am saying, simply ask.

Greg,

Once again you failed to answer my question. Your complaint was that Christians don’t follow Mosaic law. Whether that law was intended to be universally binding on the Israelites is irrelevant to the question I asked you.

Steve, thank you for your substantive response! I look forward to more of these engaging responses from you.

Let me make a couple comments. First, from what I read, you betray what seems to be a double standard. On the one hand, you ask me:

you ‘assume’, a priori that the Universe is an entity that can give direction as to what I should be worried about. But you haven’t even proven this point, or established this fact. Show me your ‘proofs’ that ‘the Universe’ is something I should listen to and be worried about.

But on the other hand, you say things like:

No, the atheist has ‘every’ convincing reason to believe that ‘God is’ from that which is known within him, from his own constitution and experience, from what he sees as he lives in this world, and from what he sees ‘out there’ (Rom. 1:19-20). He suppresses this knowledge of God that he already has, that is evident within and around him, and believes the lie that ‘a sea of chaos in which random chance collided with happenstance spins shatters of meaningless coincidence like shrapnel into his life’

Note that I have not assumed anything about the Universe. It may or may not have expectations of you. I said that I don’t know of any expectations it has of me, nor do I know for sure whether God has expectation of me

You assert that everyone knows. Please keep in mind that this is your own belief.

You said that I fail to realize that I “already” know God. Why did you put “already” in quotation marks? If I fail to realize I know something, then wouldn’t it be nice if you would convince me of it, by making me realize I knew it all along?

The main point I am making is:

For whatever reason, you don’t know for sure that the Universe has any expectations of you, or even think there is a convincing reason to believe it does. You aren’t concerned about the Universe’s expectations of you.

Yet, you seem to be fully convinced that God has expectations of you, of me, and of everyone. You believe this with all your heart. You also believe, additionally, that we all “already” know this. You claim that we suppress this truth.

Here is the thing: other people may not agree with your beliefs. Just because you believe that every person knows the layout of Mars in their head since birth, does not mean they actually do. Yes, you can also criticize my beliefs. That is why when someone disagrees with us, we should try to walk them through the reasoning that we went through in order to arrive at the knowledge. If we cannot do this, or are unwilling to, then we shouldn’t accuse the person of “suppressing” the truth, unless we are equally willing to be subjected to such accusations by anyone with any belief whatsoever.

You said I am putting words into other people’s mouths. But you are in essence telling people they “already” know something which they are pretty sure they don’t know.

I tell you this honestly, it would be good to at least sketch out how you came to believe such a position. Why do I say this? Because a lot of people won’t instantly and unquestioningly believe you that God has expectations of them, just because you happen to believe He does.

In this comment, I didn’t really number my questions. I hope that won’t cause you to think that I’ve “derailed the discussion” or something. Let me know. And yes, we can talk about my beliefs, but I first want you to get my point about convincing other people. Do you agree that, in other areas of life, convincing people by simply telling them they “already” know something is not always going to work?

In your response, can you please also answer this one question:

Suppose I tell you right now, “The universe has expectations of you that you raise your right foot every day for two hours. That’s right, the Universe has a mind and it’s beyond what you can comprehend. That is why it seems impersonal to you. But the Universe is telling you to raise your right food every day for two hours. You know this in your heart. You are suppressing this truth. Stop suppressing it and know that it is true – for I have written it right here, right now. You should also know, that if you don’t raise your right foot for even one day after reading this, the consequences will be that in the afterlife, your right foot will turn green, for a very long time, and trust me, you don’t want that.” Will you believe me and do it?

Gregory Magarshak:
You assert that everyone knows. Please keep in mind that this is your own belief.

Yes, my set of presuppositions.

Gregory Magarshak:
You said that I fail to realize that I “already” know God. Why did you put “already” in quotation marks? If I fail to realize I know something, then wouldn’t it be nice if you would convince me of it, by making me realize I knew it all along?

Again, my set of presuppositions based on the self-attesting, self-authenticating Word of God in Holy Scripture.

Gregory Magarshak:
Yet, you seem to be fully convinced that God has expectations of you, of me, and of everyone. You believe this with all your heart. You also believe, additionally, that we all “already” know this. You claim that we suppress this truth.

Yes, again, based on my set of presuppositions of the ‘authority’ of the Word of God.

Gregory Magarshak:
Here is the thing: other people may not agree with your beliefs.

Yes, their set of presuppositions may lead them to a different conclusion.

Gregory Magarshak:
Yes, you can also criticize my beliefs. That is why when someone disagrees with us, we should try to walk them through the reasoning that we went through in order to arrive at the knowledge.

Whoa, wait a minute. You say, “the reasoning…”, but we must first delve the question as to whose set of presuppositions can account for ‘reason’, from which we may arrive at knowledge. Can the atheist’s ‘system’ of philosophical naturalism/materialism ‘account’, give justified warrant, for ‘reason’? Reason is an abstract, immaterial concept. How does an immaterial concept come from that which is material?

Gregory Magarshak:
You said I am putting words into other people’s mouths. But you are in essence telling people they “already” know something which they are pretty sure they don’t know.

My set of presuppositions based on the self-attesting, self-authenticating, authoritative Word of God conclude that man is without excuse for ‘not’ knowing. I am consistent within my set of presuppositions.

Gregory Magarshak:
I tell you this honestly, it would be good to at least sketch out how you came to believe such a position. Why do I say this? Because a lot of people won’t instantly and unquestioningly believe you that God has expectations of them, just because you happen to believe He does.

No, they might not, but this in no way negates my set of presuppositions in the self-attesting, self-authenticating, authoritative Word of God. This Word of God says that they do have ‘knowledge’ of God. I am acting consistently within my set of presuppositions when I claim that ‘everyone’ has this knowledge and is without excuse.

Gregory Magarshak:
Do you agree that, in other areas of life, convincing people by simply telling them they “already” know something is not always going to work?

No, in this specific area: knowledge of God, and the metaphysical and epistemological implications of that ‘knowledge’ that ‘everyone’ has, I am consistent within my set of presuppositions to make this evident to them.

Gregory Magarshak:
The universe has expectations of you that you raise your right foot every day for two hours. That’s right, the Universe has a mind and it’s beyond what you can comprehend. That is why it seems impersonal to you. But the Universe is telling you to raise your right food every day for two hours. You know this in your heart. You are suppressing this truth. Stop suppressing it and know that it is true – for I have written it right here, right now.

That the universe has a mind, is an axiom within your set of presuppositions. We could then discuss a whole host of issues as to why this set of presuppositions is the ‘right’ set of presuppositions to interpret all of reality. One such issue, would be how an impersonal universe can generate ‘personality’, among others. We could continue our debate with whose set of presuppositions makes the most sense of our human experience and the world we live in; whose set of presuppositions provides the preconditions of intelligibility and avoids the impossibility of the contrary.

Gregory Magarshak:
Will you believe me and do it?

If I am convinced that your set of presuppositions provide the preconditions of intelligibility and avoids the impossibility of the contrary, yes.

Have you asked enough questions of me, Greg, and will allow me to start asking questions of you for which you will answer?

Steve Drake: patience, we will definitely have a chance to explore my beliefs. When I am answering, I am not learning. And I think in this case we are making good progress on a subject I am trying to learn more about: Christian belief. You think I don’t take it seriously — that I am “just an theist” — but I do. So bear with me. After we are done, I will let you know when it’s time to ask me questions. Is that ok with you?

So it turns out you have presuppositions. That explains the misunderstanding I may have had before. Can you please outline the presuppositions for me which you consider relevant? And why do you presuppose them? I don’t necessarily know all your presuppositions in this matter, so that would help me understand where you are coming from.

So my questions are:
1) What are your presuppositions exactly? Can you give me a summary relevant to the argument I’ve been putting forth

2) What are presuppositions? (I confess I’m not quite sure what YOU mean by them.) Is it something you will take as an axiom and try to hold on to it as long as you can unless it has been proven to be incoherent / false? (Note: if we assume a statement and then somehow are able to prove it false, that is a proof by contradiction. But it would require you to assume other statements even strongly, such as e.g. that logic is consistent.)

3) WHy do you presuppose them?

lambda.calc,

I don’t think I’ve equivocated, if that’s what you’re trying to imply. By the way, your google search recommendation turned up a plethora of results. The question is really, if those are motivating reasons for God, why can’t they be motivating reasons for us?

I updated my comment with the actual link (my dad’s computer was having problems). Here it is again. I think that your question ‘if God has reasons for commanding us to love truth, then aren’t these reasons the ground for our obligation?’ is precisely what is dealt with in this post.

In order for this to be substantive, we need to have an independent notion of perfection. So when I ask “Why does God value the true?” and You respond “Because God is perfect.” So, what is it for something to be perfect? If it’s just for it to be God, then well, you’ve given me an empty tautology, which is no reason think that perfection is anything different from some stipulative property.

Yes, I’ll have to appeal to Tom here to see if there’s a deeper answer, but I think we do arrive at something almost tautological. God himself is the standard for goodness, truth, beauty and every other attribute. That is what we mean when we say that God is perfect. To ask ‘Why does God value truth’ is just like asking ‘Why is God good?’ Our response is that this is simply his nature.

In the same way, we would see the fallacy in asking a Platonic idealist “Is ‘the Good’ good?” He would respond just like a Christian would: “Your question presupposes a standard of goodness by which you evaluate good. So you cannot meaningfully ask if the standard itself is good. That’s what it means to be the standard.”

In this case, I tend to side with the presuppositionalists. It seems to me to be a somewhat hopeless quest to reason to God “from the bottom up.” But if we start with God as he reveals himself in Scripture and reason “from the top down”, then reality suddenty makes sense.

-Neil

C’mon man. Patience? Are your serious? No, that’s not okay with me. This could go on indefinitely. )) But me thinks that is your tactic, no?

Patience is a virtue Why are you in such a hurry? Do you really want me to stop learning about your own Christian beliefs, and stop asking you questions? I am genuinely interested in how you understand things. It would also enable me to answer your questions better. How about this — let’s post another 10 comments each where we genuinely engage with each other as we have been doing in the last 2 comments, and I promise you that I will also answer your questions about my worldview as much as I can, and at least as much as what I asked of you. Deal?

I want to get to the bottom of this.

Also, through explaining things to me, you might get a better / more solid understanding of details you might not have thought of — I know I certainly improve my knowledge through explaining, and come to new realizations.

1) Can you please outline the presuppositions for me which you consider relevant? And why do you presuppose them?

A) God is.
B) The self-attesting, self-authenticating Word of God, as revealed in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures is just that, self-attesting, self-authenticating, and authoritative. It is revelational epistemology as opposed to autonomous epistemology. I ‘presuppose’ that the living and true, triune God, speaks to us with absolute authority in infallible Scripture. My ‘reasoning’ then finds its legitimate function as a servant or tool of God’s Word, rather than its judge.

By A, you mean God exists, or something more?

In B, you say Word of God. Do you mean by this “The Bible” — a collection of books and writings canonized around 325 AD by the Council of Nicaea under Emperor Constatine? This is an important question, because if you say “The Word of God” and, for example, allow for the possibility that Paul was just a deluded guy writing from what he thought was revelation, but not at all divinely inspired, then you would affirm the Word of God, but not Paul’s writing, which they decided to include in the Bible. I guess my question here is, What books do you consider the infallible word of God, and why? Is the criteria for a book to be “The Word of God” that it be in the Christian Bible? Or is it another criteria. I ask this sincerely, because the Bible didn’t just pop into existence but came from diverse writings, some of which made it into the Canon and some didn’t, and many people have different ideas about what constitutes God’s Word to us.

Do you believe there is an oral Torah given by God to the Jews, that did not make it into the Bible?

From the fact that you said God is “triune”, I assume that you take the Nicene Creed to be completely authoritative. Correct me if I am wrong. I just want to point out that there are different ways of understanding the writings which comprise the Bible — even as embodied in the final, canonized version. The doctrine of the Trinity is not universally accepted by all Christians. Therefore, it gives me some clues as to what you consider the “self-affirming, self-authenticating Word of God” to actually be. But I would rather you explain it yourself than put words into your mouth.

That which is ‘assumed’ as an axiomatic proposition, often hidden, which is reflexively depended upon for foundational issues of human experience such as 1) the nature and structure of reality 2) the possibility and method of knowledge, and 3) the standards and universality of morality.

All your presuppositions taken together make up your ‘worldview’.

Awesome!

Gregory Magarshak:
3) WHy do you presuppose them?

I am convinced that the preconditions of intelligibility and the impossibility of the contrary are ‘only’ answered within the Judeo-Christian ‘system’. No other ‘system’ explains the ‘human experience’, and the world we live in, adequately. I am convinced that Yeshua Mashiach lived, died, and rose from the dead in payment for my sin problem at a ‘point’ in history according to this self-attesting, self-authenticating revelatory Word of God.

As far as I understand, you are convinced of two things:

A) The preconditions of “intelligibility” and “impossibility of the contrary” are answered in the Judeo-Christian “system”.

Here I want to ask, what is the “Judeo-Christian system” ? There are many versions of Christianity, and many more that have fallen by the wayside as the Catholic Church named them heretical (Docetism, Judaizers, etc.) Today we have Calvinism, Lutheranism, Catholicism, Latter-Day Saints, BaHa’i, Rastafarians, and many more systems based on the Judeo-Christian system. I am assuming that you disagree with some of them.

And more importantly, what are intelligibility and “impossibility of the contrary”? I am guessing from the terms it means the thing “is readable” and “it is impossible that it can’t be true”? But that guess is probably way off base…

B) No other “system” explains the “human experience” and the world we live in, as adequately as the “Judeo-Christian system”

This is the one I am totally baffled by. How do you possibly know that every other system fails to explain the “human experience” and the world we live in (as well as the Judeo-Christian system) ? Have you examined every other system as deeply as you have Christianity? How do you know there isn’t a worldview that explains the “human experience” and the world we live in just as well or better? Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Judaism? That is such a sweeping statement, that I can only ask, “how can you possibly know?”

What, in particular, do you find about naturalism so utterly lacking? You say it fails to explain the world we live in as well as Christianity — I think that point is not accurate. For a great multitude — millions — of things I can name, the Bible will not explain them as well as science. I will give two examples: “what is the reproductive cycle of lice” and “what causes volcanoes” — to which learned scholars who had the writings of God answered, around 300 AD, that lice generate spontaneously, and volcanoes are an act of God. Let me note that everything is an act of God, from the smallest to the biggest action — but geology explains about subduction zones of tectonic plates and how lower-density material is ejected from the mantle back into the atmosphere through a volcano.

Would you agree with me that science “explains the world” in some ways better than the Bible? Perhaps you would like to refine your statement that no other system can do better than the Bible in explaining the world. (I am assuming here that The Bible is God’s word.) Maybe you meant it in some kind of “big picture” sort of way.

As far as “human experience” I also think this should be better defined. I can only guess at what you mean, and definitely, science again has the upper hand on understanding biologically what goes on. Where as the Bible says people are “possessed by demons” we today would point to a hormone imbalance, a viral infection such as rabies, or a disease like Alheimer’s. Science is able to formulate cures for it by relying on the “naturalistic” worldview. But in another sense I completely agree with you: science has not been able to answer the big questions about consciousness. I am not sure the questions even are, but we can feel that we have consciousness, yet science doesn’t account for that. I completely agree with you there. But saying NO OTHER SYSTEM can explain the human experience means you have studied all of them, and I doubt that is the case. I may suggest you look to the Jews to tell you what their writings mean, including the more mystical writings such as the Kabbalah. Do you think the Kabbalah is part of the Word of God?

Neil,

So you are saying that it is impossible to believe propositions which you know to be false, correct? In that case, is this impossibility cognitive or semantic? In other words, are you claiming that it is semantically possible to ‘believe’ something which you know to be false, but psychologically impossible (i.e. human beings simply can’t bring themselves to ‘believe’ what they no is false any more than they can look at the own eyes)? Or are you defining ‘belief’ to exclude the possibility of ‘mentally affirming what is known to be false’?

I think the use of ‘know’ in your first attempt to characterize my position is a step in the wrong direction, but an understandable one. I think we can’t believe anything which appears to us to be false. The impossibility is cognitive, though I’m not sure if you and are on entirely the same page. By cognitive, I just mean at the level of cognition that is, for any proposition it is impossible for me to think that the proposition is true while believing it to be false.

Belief seems to be necessary for knowledge. I don’t know of any philosopher who thinks otherwise. Though, of course, philosophers espouse all sorts of weird views. But consider the following sentence: “It’s snowing outside, but I don’t believe it is.” That strikes me as bizarre. It’s not inconsistent, but it grates against my notions of linguistic competence. Philosophers call this kind of statement Moore-paradoxical. It’s not a true paradox, but it’s off in a very fundamental semantic way.

Do you think that we can think a thought along the lines of “I believe that snow is white, and snow is not white”? That’s really what’s at stake in my opinion.

The “average postmodern person” I am thinking of probably holds ideas about truth reflective of the pragmatism of Richard Rorty or even the New Age beliefs of someone like John Lilly who believes that we can actually create our own reality. But I agree that ‘naive’ was an inappropriate word (especially coming from a non-philsopher like myself).

That’s amusing. I can’t give you too much in terms of strong data, but in my experience relatively few atheists are in line with Rorty. Dennett is probably further from Rorty than I am, and I don’t consider myself in line with Rorty at all. In fact, most atheists are probably some sort of naive logical empiricist. To get a handle on how they think you really ought to read Russell, Carnap and Quine.

They think that there are true and false sentences, and that they are true and false because of what the world is really like. In fact, I have a hard time thinking of any naturalists in analytic philosophy who take Rorty seriously. Perhaps you should try to learn more about the history of empiricism? Russell’s Principles of Philosophy and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus would be good places to start.

A lot of what I believe is probably captured in the work of Carnap. Especially a paper called “Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology” and his Logical Syntax of the World. I’d be willing to make adjustments of course. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but rather than paralyzing, I find that exciting. There are unsolved problems in philosophy. Which is pretty cool in my opinion.

After all, there is no objective value or obligation in pursuing the truth. Therefore, if you feel a that the truth-value of a given proposition will not help you meet your goals, you ought not to pursue obtaining its truth-value.” Should an atheist preface each debate with this statement?

I disagree. I’ve already said that we should believe what is true. Beliefs about God are formed using some pretty complex processes, we generally have an interest in knowing whether or not we’ve got the right beliefs as a result of those processes. After all, if we turn those processes to other ends we have, we want to know if they still work there. Moreover, I think most believers and disbelieves alike would agree that believing in the Christian God has practical consequences. I would certainly like to know if I’ve been getting it wrong, either in my belief in the Christian God or my disbelief.

lambda.calc,

I still don’t think I’ve equivocated, even given that analysis. If God has motivating reasons to think/believe/assert/command that human beings should value the truth, why aren’t those motivating reasons, motivations for us?

An equivalent statement of the problem can be given in terms of justification. First of all, let me note that this need not be justification that we can grasp, just that there some fact which justifies the command. Either God has some justification for the command, or it’s arbitrary. It’s seems fairly evident that we only ought to follow commands which are justified. If God’s command is justified, why isn’t that justification the reason we should follow the command? If God’s command isn’t justified, why follow it at all?

First, I think you may be passing over the distinction between value and obligation. All truth has value because truth is consistent with God’s nature. That is the reason that knowing the multimplication table is good or certainly is better than thinking that 2 x 2 = 5. However, as you pointed out earlier, we are certainly not obligated to believe the multiplication table. This is the distinction. Our obligations are grounded in God’s commands, not in God’s nature.

So now let’s look at the issue of justification. (Tom, again, I’m hoping that you or some other philosopher will correct me if I am talking nonsense). When I ask if something is “justified”, I always appeal to some external source or standard to show why a given action is justified. In this sense of the word, I would say that God’s commands are not justified, because there is no external standard to which we can appeal; indeed it doesn’t even make sense to ask if God’s commands are justified if he himself is the ultimate standard. However, because God’s commands are always consistent with his nature, in this sense, we might say that his commands are internally justified in that they are perfectly consistent with the ultimate standard of goodness: God himself.

Now this distinction is important to see why it would be silly to ground our obligation in God’s justifying reasons for giving his commands. Imagine that I tell my son to bring me a hammer from the garage. He is now obligated to bring me a hammer. If he says “Surely, my father has justifying reasons for asking me to bring a hammer. So my obligation is grounded in those reasons, not in his request” he would be simply be wrong; my command, not my reasons, form the grounds for his obligation. If he further decided that he was obligated to bring me a screwdriver and a wrench because I will need these tools later, we would similarly be wrong. It might be good for him to bring me these extra tools. But because I have not commanded it, it would not be obligatory.

I think your accusation of relativism is also misplaced. Yes, our moral values and obligations are relative to God. But to call a divine command theorist a relativist would be like calling a Platonist a relativist because the good is relative to the Good! But this does go back to what I aaid earlier. There is a sense in which there is an inescapable is-ness to God’s nature. He’s just there and he is just good. Indeed, He defines good. We can reject his nature or his grounding of goodness, truth, and all reality. But we can’t negate it. I’m curious to know exactly what an atheist is seeking for when he wants to ground ‘the good’ or ‘truth’ or ‘justice’ or ‘reason’? If he is looking for an ultimate, objective standard, does it make sense for him to complain if he finds one?

-Neil

Gregory Magarshak:
By A, you mean God exists, or something more?

In B, you say Word of God. Do you mean by this “The Bible” — a collection of books and writings canonized around 325 AD by the Council of Nicaea under Emperor Constatine?

I presuppose God’s existence. That He is there and that He is not silent. That the knowledge of Him is rooted in His own self-disclosure. This self-disclosure of God and from God is revealed in both the Old Testament of Jewish Scripture and New Testament of Christian writings called ‘the Bible’. (Please note that all the writers of both Old and New Testaments were Jews, save possibly one). This ‘collection’ has one overall theme and purpose and I embrace it as the actual truth of God; that this living and true, triune God, speaks to us with absolute authority in infallible Scripture. I submit to this self-disclosure of God and adopt a revelational epistemology as opposed to thinking I as a finite individual can come to a knowledge of truth autonomously (autonomous epistemology). I presuppose this sovereign God as the source of all material and logical possibility. As a Christian, I submit to the Lordship of Christ as revealed in this self-disclosure of God; renouncing autonomy and coming under the authority of God’s Son, Jesus the Christ. These comprise my set of presuppositions, you are free to choose your own set of presuppositions, and in fact, we all do whether we realize it or not.

Gregory Magarshak:
what are intelligibility and “impossibility of the contrary”?

The correct phrase I used was ‘the preconditions of intelligibility’. But let’s first revisit what a presupposition is again. A ‘presupposition’ is an elementary assumption in one’s reasoning or in the process by which opinions are formed. It is not just any assumption in an argument, but a personal commitment that is held at the most basic level of one’s network of beliefs. Presuppositions form a wide-ranging, foundational perspective (or starting point) in terms of which everything else is interpreted and evaluated. As such, they have the greatest authority in one’s thinking, being treated as one’s least negotiable beliefs and being granted the highest immunity to revision’ (Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Reading and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ, Presbyterian and Reformed, 1998).

Your ‘system’, ‘paradigm’, or ‘worldview’ is then a network of presuppositions in terms of which all experience is related and interpreted.

Have to leave for a bit, will post this much, more to follow.

Hey guys, I just wanted to weigh in on your discussion of Divine Command Theory. I did a bit of research and this kind of problem was investigated in antiquity as well, by other cultures. Here is Socrates’ argument. (PS: I think that Socrates may have been a literary device by Plato, and not a real person.)

A refutation of this argument can be found in Plato’s Euthyphro, where Socrates asks a question that is an effective refutation of the Divine Command theory. Expressed in monotheistic terms, it could be summarized: “Are certain actions good because God commands them, or does God command them because they are good?” Michael S. Valle, in the essay “A Critique of the Divine Command Theory of Ethics,” (this document is unfortunately not to be found online anymore) and referring to Baruch Bordy, lists the argument like this:

1. Let us suppose that it is the case that there is some action A that is right (wrong) only because God wants us to do (refrain from doing) it.
2. There must be some reason for God’s wanting us to do (refrain from doing) A, some reason that does not involve God’s wanting us to do (refrain from doing) it.
3. Therefore, that reason must also be a reason why A is right (wrong).
So we have a contradiction, (1) is false, and either there are no actions that are right (wrong) because God wants us to do (refrain from doing) them or, if there are such actions, that is not the only reason why those actions are right (wrong)

I should mention that premise 2 may be wrong, in which case we must concede that good is whatever God says, even if God has no reason for saying it.

I also want to mention that in the Bible, we seem to have a different understanding of good by some of the important people. Abraham and Moses seem to argue with God and refer to “good” as independent of God’s decisions.

For example, when God explained his punishment over Sodom, Abraham demonstrated that he believed that right and wrong existed apart from God:

Ge 18:23,25 “Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? …Far be it from you to do such a thing-to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”"

I wonder how you would address this as Christians. Shouldn’t the attitudes of important characters in the Bible inform the presuppositions you would arm yourselves with?

Tom: about your comment #174, I have no idea what you are talking about. Do you not see Steve Drake’s conversations with me and how he talks? I have indicated on the other thread, in response to YOUR complaining about the morass, that I will no longer post to it and contribute to the morass. Now I am supposed to be at fault for not continuing to post on THAT thread, but posting on this one? I honestly do not appreciate this whole unproductive mode.

I propose we drop what happened in the past (because rather than try to explain once again that I do not think my questions were answered the first time, then they were answered by you with I Don’t Know, and not answered by Steve at all, etc…) I would rather just move on. Can we move on and engage with each other or will you keep citing some “sins” of mine in the past post as reason to kill everything I say in every thread?

Tom: let me be clear. I have not maligned Steve Drake, nor was my frustration at him not being able to answer my questions. On the contrary, I am frustrated by what he did before:

calling me names
insinuating I am dishonest
derailing our conversations with questions unrelated to the topic
when I answered him, I got blamed for going off topic

this is what I saw. If you REALLY want to go there, I can try to spend some time and dig up exactly what I mean. Or you can just look at the conversation between just me and Steve Drake and see that he was starting things, and I was responding, and then you came along and saw the last part of it and were like, “Greg, why are you _____”? Take a look at just our conversation and you will see why I drew your attention, in my defense, that Steve Drake’s conversational tactics with me.

Neil,

First, I think you may be passing over the distinction between value and obligation. All truth has value because truth is consistent with God’s nature. That is the reason that knowing the multimplication table is good or certainly is better than thinking that 2 x 2 = 5. However, as you pointed out earlier, we are certainly not obligated to believe the multiplication table. This is the distinction. Our obligations are grounded in God’s commands, not in God’s nature.

Fair enough, point taken. I wasn’t duly careful and probably rammed together a couple of concepts to get into talking about God’s nature. I still think there’s a deep problem of circularity. Which I’ll return to in a bit. I’m sorry if this is pulling out too far, but I just need a bit of space to think about the issues.

So, I’ve been thinking about this at the level of whether or not the following statement is true: “You should believe the truth”. If it’s the sort of thing that can be true, then we’re committed to a form of cognitivism about normative claims. That means that sentences like “Lying is wrong” and “Telling the truth is right” can also be assigned truth or falsity, right?

So here’s the question. Do you think that any normative fact, alone, can ground any obligations? The following seems pretty obvious to me: “If it is true that we should keep our promises, then we’re obligated to keep any promises we make.” To deny that norms generate obligations, in at least some instances, seems to me to be a pretty radical form of skepticism about normativity.

Anyways, I think that’s mostly where I’m coming from on the whole obligation front. I’m not sure I have too much more time to go into elaborate detail. And it seems like you’re busy yourself. Perhaps a better venue would be e-mails? We could go at a more relaxed pace, and not worry about the confusions that working in a thread creates. And of course, I’d be more than comfortable cc-ing Tom to carry on the discussion.

I think your accusation of relativism is also misplaced. Yes, our moral values and obligations are relative to God. But to call a divine command theorist a relativist would be like calling a Platonist a relativist because the good is relative to the Good! But this does go back to what I aaid earlier. There is a sense in which there is an inescapable is-ness to God’s nature. He’s just there and he is just good. Indeed, He defines good. We can reject his nature or his grounding of goodness, truth, and all reality.

The relativism objection just comes in at the level of truth conditions for normative claims. That said, If God defines good, what sense does it make to call God good?

But we can’t negate it. I’m curious to know exactly what an atheist is seeking for when he wants to ground ‘the good’ or ‘truth’ or ‘justice’ or ‘reason’? If he is looking for an ultimate, objective standard, does it make sense for him to complain if he finds one?

Not sure about the moral terms “good” and “justice” those are some deep questions. But that’s no reason to despair about whether or not atheists can find answers, strikes me as a motivation to do metaethics. Unless of course, you’ve got good reasons to think that it’s impossible to find answers to those questions. And I’m open to that response, but you have to convince me.

But I’m not an ethicist. Just an aspiring logician. Truth? I think that philosophers have been getting a pretty good handle on truth lately. It’s not totally ironed out. But we’re getting there. Truth just is a semantic property. It doesn’t strike me as anything deep or special. ‘”Snow is white” is true’ just means that ‘Snow is white’. Which is just a claim about the world. It seems to me that if there’s any duty to believe the truth, it just follows from the nature of belief.

Gregory Magarshak:
But now you are not doing it anymore. So I am happy to forget what happened before, as long as we continue discussing in a reasonable manner, and addressing what the other is saying.

My last comment to ‘you’ Greg in #164 above was cut short because I had to leave and decided to post what I had written to that point and comment that I would be back to comment further. Between then and when I returned Tom criticized me for using Christian-eze in our dialog. My last comment to you with this as backdrop was my #169, asking at the end of that comment whether you wanted me to continue where I left off without yet explaining the ‘preconditions of intelligibility’, or the ‘impossibility of the contrary’. Implicit within my comment was whether you felt I was using Christian-eze and whether that was an impediment to our understanding of each other and furtherance of our dialog. I did not ‘ask’ this specific question, but in the back of mind, it was there in reference to my question of whether you wanted to continue or not.

You state (#183 above) that it is up to me to continue, but I am asking here now, whether with all that has gone on between #164 and #185 whether you wish to proceed, and whether Tom feels that our conversation is on topic. If Tom feels our conversation is ‘not’ on topic, then I will cease and desist.

Steve: of course I care to believe the truth!

Greg,
Staying on topic, I think, let me rephrase my question: ‘What ‘is’ the truth, and why does atheism not provide any objective grounds for the value of our obligation to believe ‘the truth’?

Hi Greg,
We’re hittin’ on all cylinders now, baby! Exactly, what ‘does’ it mean that we have an ‘obligation’ to do anything? I like this question my friend, and now we’re clickin’.

In regards to ‘pausing’ the discussion we had before I’m cool with pickin’ it up later, but I don’t think Tom thinks we’re on topic with that, so (I think) we’re on topic with this discussion now about ‘atheism’ and ‘obligation’ and ‘grounding’, right?

Tom,

What Neil is trying to say, I think, is not there is a weight of opinion backing him, but that there is a weight of evidence backing him. That is, he’s suggesting that there are many people for whom your description of belief doesn’t match what they do when they believe; or it doesn’t fit their actual experience of belief.

Fair enough. I certainly didn’t mean to imply that it was the only way we could think of belief. Just that it seems obvious if we think of the work that it does in our cogntive life. There’s an odd undercurrent of voluntarism about belief that seems to underly a lot of this discussion.

So, I think Neil’s examples undercut the notion that my claim about belief is necessary, and perhaps immediately self-evident. Points which I’ve never defended, but I apologize if I implied that it was. I think it’s something that’s supported by a pretty useful philosophical tool. One that I think is available to naturalists. If we want to talk about the cognitive role something plays, imagine that we couldn’t have that thing, and see what difference it would make. Perhaps the thought experiment is mistaken, I’d be interested to know why. But I think it’s in line with current psychology and philosophy. For the most part anyways. And I definitely don’t see any of the new atheists dashing head-long to work against psychology and cog-sci.

One important bit though, is that I think that if you want your case to be as strong as possible, then you should pick the strongest opponents. That’s part of what I was trying to get at by charity earlier, sometimes I forget that certain ways of speaking are peculiar to anglophone philosophy. So if the goal of the arguments you guys are giving is to convince others that God is necessary to ground the claim that “We should believe what is true” you really ought to focus on atheist theories which attempt to defend the claim. Not to suggest that you haven’t, but I think it’s safe to say that Rorty is ruled out right from the start as being a suitable candidate for analysis.

Neil,

That sounds a lot like Euthyphro, which many in the past have brought up to show that the concept “God” is incoherent. This way of understanding God is both consistent with Christian theology and also a solution to the Euthyphro dilemma.

Not only that, but I see our discussion as being between a form of atheism (naturalism, that is) and theism. You as a naturalist have the right to define your terms and explain your position, and I know you grant the same to us theists. That list of attributes is an explanation of our position concerning God (a partial explanation, of course).

I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a serious work in metaethics or metaphysics which says that the Euthyphro argument entails that God is incoherent. Only divine command theory. It probably undercuts the moral argument for God’s existence, but from the sounds of it, you seem to buy into ontological arguments, rather than the moral argument. Correct me if I’m wrong though.

So yes, what I asked pretty much is a variation on the Euthyphro. Which I, and many other philosophers, take to be a pretty conclusive argument. I’ve only ever seen one person try to defend divine command theory against it, and it was pretty unconvincing. You guys seem to think that it can be defended against, so I’m guess I’m just curious if there’s any way to make sense of the position. So thank you guys for giving it a good shot.

So, you write:

I’m not so sure where those claims are grounded. Here’s what concerns me: is there a “should” attached to the truths one pursues? Are there better, more important truths to be pursued? Obviously yes, as you have noted. But what if one really should pursue the truth of knowing and following God? If that’s the case, it implies that God can be known and followed, that there is instrumental value in knowing God, and yet that there is something non grounded by the world in that. It’s grounded in God.

I’m not quite sure I follow what you’re trying to do here. I could grant each step you make without any loss since it’s purely a series of conditional statements. It remains to be seen if any of the antecedents obtain. By the world, I mean all that is the case, surely facts about God are included in that?

As to general, hypothetical norms consider my example again. “If you want to be a doctor you should go medical school”. In order to become a doctor, you need to go medical school. That’s just a fact about society, the world around us. It’s contingent, of course. It’s on a par with “If you want to play a game of chess, you ought to follow the rules.” Not very interesting norms, but are we able to agree that these norms exist, and are grounded in some basic, contingent facts. Do you have any reason to reject them?

So if that’s the case, there is some kind of duty attached to pursuing a certain truth, but that duty cannot be fully apprehended until one begins to apprehend the truth that is the object of said pursuit.

Wouldn’t partial apprehension be sufficient to get us started?

This takes the form, I should do x, but I won’t know I should do x until I begin to do x, where x is “pursue the knowledge of God.”

I’m not entirely sure what this means. Following through on your suggested substitution “I should pursue knowledge of God but I won’t know that I should pursue God until I begin to pursue knowledge of God.” It strikes me as overly convoluted. Could you try to summarize this into a single point?

Maybe, since the value of knowing God is possibly so powerfully eternal (if God exists), one would be well advised in a Pascalian way to pursue that knowledge just in case it pays off. I’m having trouble deciding whether such prudence has any moral dimension to it; but it seems that if one is committed to pursuing the highest possible truths, then some kind of obligation (even if an obligation of personal consistency and integrity) would attach to it.

I think we might be in agreement. We agree that knowledge of God could have significant importance on how we might live our lives, and thus it is an important and interesting question. I might be losing track of the dialectic though. I think the question of whether or not God exists is worth investigating, if only because people claim that we can reach that knowledge using fairly standard epistemic tools, and it’s worth investigating how those tools are being used. And from this, all I seem to get is that you think that it’s important too, and we’ll realize that importance once we start to gain the knowledge in question.

Also, what do you intend the final it to refer to in that paragraph? It seems ambiguous between obligations, highest possible truths, and commitment to the highest possible truths.

This comment is getting long, so I’ll try one more quick one before I head out for the evening.

The tautology is resolved in the proposition, “God is.” At that point descriptions of perfection, which are descriptions of God, become descriptions of the personal foundation and core of all reality. And I don’t think it’s that hard to think of perfections as such. For instance God’s truth is another way of looking at his wholeness: he is not divided within or against himself.

“God is.” doesn’t seem like a complete thought, and can’t be a proposition on those grounds. Do you mean “God exists”? The standard line is that existence isn’t a property, however and the proposition expressed by “God exists” roughly corresponds to the claim that “There exists an entity, and that entity falls under the concept of God.” And you talk about God’s truth, as if God has the property of truth, but I have no idea what that means. It still seems to be a category error.

I guess my main point is that I’m still not sure that you’re saying anything which is really well defined when you talk about God’s truth. Is this all meant to be a metaphor? Ditto for God’s whole-ness, do you just mean that God lacks none of his parts? That’s what it’d mean for any ordinary entity to be considered whole.

The crux of it is this though: perfection just means to lack any faults. But faults seem to only get defined as a result of God’s commands. So is God perfect just because his commands define him as being perfect?

lambda.calc:
First, my analysis of belief consists of belief just being an attitude that we towards a proposition which construes the proposition as true, and commits ourselves to the truth of that proposition until we revise our belief.

Hi lc,
My use of quotation marks is for emphasis and inflection of the written word to the spoken, in the same way that I might use italics, or rarely bold to stress that word. I apologize if this is confusing. It seems to possibly be annoying as you read my posts, right? Not sure of the proper convention for adding emphasis and inflection to words that are written, might you be able to suggest some possibilities? In the meantime, I will avoid them as much as possible.

Now to your statement above. Let me rephrase it as I understand it and correct me if this is not what you are claiming about belief:

[Belief is an attitude that we have towards a proposition which affirms or denies that proposition, committing ourselves to the truth or falsity of our claim about that proposition until further evidence convinces us to revise our claim of truth to falsity or falsity to truth.]

Would you have a problem as to how I rephrased it above?

Tom,

I thought I had already answered you on God’s having the property of truth.

Unless I’ve missed it, I don’t see any post where you respond directly to the charge of committing a category error. Here’s the record of discussion as I see it on the topic: I respond to your claim that “God is true” with the response that the sentence doesn’t even make sense in 126. You respond in post 130 with a laundry list of different properties, eg. “God values the truth”. That’s not the same thing as saying that “God is true” unless you intended “God is true” as a metaphor. I didn’t push you on it, since if you recall, I said that you would have to have had reasons for thinking that each of those things is part of God’s nature.

Anyways, things get interestign again at 170 where bring in the notion that “God is” is a proposition. But you seem to skirt the issues I have with that as well. But I take it your post in 206 is meant to be a response along those lines.

There is in classical theology the idea that God is being itself; that to exist is to partake of being, but God does not partake of being, he is being itself. That’s why “God is” rather than “God exists.” It is of course very difficult to put in words and I am not expert on the subject.

I’m not entirely sure if talk of Being isn’t just nonsense. The post you link to doesn’t say anything to confirm that, or provide any reason to think that “Being” whatever it is, must be personal or God. In fact, God seems to have properties that Being, need not have. Metaphysics, if it is to be intelligible, shouldn’t be esoteric. I think talk about Being is esoteric metaphysics at its worst, and we can very easily do without it.

This is exactly the upshot of the work of Russell, (early) Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle against those following in Hegel’s footsteps.

“Perfection” is not exhausted by the absence of faults. God in his being is maximally great in knowledge, wisdom, unity, love, holiness; and while from our human perspective it’s difficult to imagine some of those attributes as other than the erasure or elimination of faults, it’s not necessary to conceive of God growing toward perfection in that way (which I don’t think you thought) or of conceiving of himself in that way.

Why should God maximally possess those qualities rather than another, on the supposition that he is perfect? Perhaps perfection entails maximally lying. But that seems absurd, right? So perfection, at its core requires some normative facts, facts about value. But we only get those facts as a consequence of God’s commands.

Perhaps what you’re trying to say is that everything depends on God, and so goodness like everything else, depends on God. But then there is no unique moral argument for God’s existence. You could just as easily run an argument for God’s existence on the fact that there are falsehoods, or lies, or fictions. This doesn’t strike me as a rational doctrine, just mysticism.

God’s only limit is that he cannot contradict himself, for to do so would obviously be an imperfection in his unity, wholeness, and integrity. (And just because I’ve illustrated unity, wholeness, and integrity in a negative fashion this time does not mean that’s how those attributes of God are defined.)

I don’t think that’s so obvious. When we say that a person doesn’t contradict their self, we just mean that they are consistent. But why think that it’s better to be consistent than not? Being inconsistent doesn’t seem to undermine unity, wholeness or integrity. Or at least it’s not obvious that it does.

lc,
Don’t know if our conversation is on-topic or not, but you realize I was taking your comment about belief in #203: belief just being an attitude that we towards a proposition which construes the proposition as true, and commits ourselves to the truth of that proposition until we revise our belief, and trying to flesh in the assumptions within that statement.

What part of my rephrasing of your statement above do you specifically disagree with, and let’s just stay on this for a minute, can we? Instead of giving me examples, can you point to the words in my statement (which is a rephrasing of your statement) that you find in error and would not have used?

Lc,
Why can’t I believe that something is false? I don’t think that is what you are saying. I’m not affirming and denying the same proposition, I’m either affirming it or denying it. Your definition states that ‘belief is an attitude that we have towards a proposition’. My attitude towards a particular proposition is that it is either true or false, not both, and I take one side of that equation as my belief.

Can you clarify?

Lc,
Thanks for your patience with me. In reading your posts in this thread I feel I am somewhat at a disadvantage in the conversations you are having with Neil, Tom, and others. You might be a university professor somewhere that teaches philosophy, I don’t know, and I am not. I hope I’m not distracting from the dialog you are having with Neil and Tom. I might be asking questions that you guys covered in the above posts already and I don’t want to cause annoyance by going over ground that you’ve already covered. Please refer me to previous posts above if that is the case.

Knowledge involves belief, (that’s why I’m trying to nail down a definition of belief that we both agree on) but if knowledge collapses into belief, then utter relativism results (necessitating skepticism), doesn’t it? Knowing in the intellectual sense involves knowing propositions; I would say that knowledge is a subcategory of belief as well: to know something is, at least, to believe it. Propositions are either true or false (that which is expressed by an indicative sentence in a natural language). So maybe we might characterize belief as a positive cognitive attitude towards a proposition, an action guiding mental state that a person relies on in his/her theoretical inferences or practical actions or plans. This definition here might better coincide with your definition in #203 above, what do you think?

Greg,

A Christian Jew is one by definition that believes that Jesus is God and therefore the legitimate interpreter of God’s will. Nothing in your comment is even remotely relevant to the person in that situation. You are arguing a whole different question – Should Jews be Christians?

This is off topic anyway so I don’t think we should pursue it any further.

Melissa, according to whose definition of Christian Jew? Many people who consider themselves Christian do not believe Jesus is God. I am a Jew and I do not believe Jesus is God.

You have not addressed almost anything I wrote in my extensive answers to you. The Jews do not consider Jesus to be the legitimate interpreter of God’s law in his time. That distinction belongs to the Sanhedrin (the court of the sages) as established by God himself through Moses, and explicitly authorized in Deuteronomy. The Jews agree that Jesus was an itinerant preacher. So?

lambda.calc

There are other properties but they are not transcendentals. True and good are both transcendentals. They are things not restricted to any category or individual.

Point taken about my use of the phrase according to Christian thought. I don’t think you need share a particular metaphysics to recognise that lying is an absence of truth, just as dark is an absence of light.

With divine command theory I think it is very hard to defend without resorting to concepts that are more at home in a thomist metaphysic so I don’t see the point in going down that path in the first place.

But in this comment thread, I’m only going to try and justify the claim that atheists can think that we should believe the truth. In a non-arbitrary fashion.

Yes we can agree on that, please continue.

Melissa: What point is that? Is it the same point as your original one? I don’t really get it

Melissa: what point do you mean? Is it the same point as your original point? I don’t get it.

You originally asked me why I think Jewish Christians should continue to follow the law given to their forefathers. I take it you now agree with my answer?

Hi lc,
you said:
I’m not proposing a theory of knowledge. Just an analysis of belief.

But yet within these discussions we cannot avoid talking about each other’s theory of knowledge, can we? Isn’t this the crux of the issue between the atheist and Christian: an epistemological disagreement?

If knowing something takes as a partial description: ‘Taking to be true, in a committed/serious fashion’ (believing) it to be the case, then I think I am in agreement. Yet knowledge is clearly more that a mere belief. It must involve truth and evidence as well, wouldn’t you agree? So shouldn’t we also be talking about our theory of truth and having justified, substantiated support for evidence?

Melissa,

If this is your response, then allow me to adjust my argument one last time:

There are other properties but they are not transcendentals. True and good are both transcendentals. They are things not restricted to any category or individual.

If there are any transcendental properties which are not perfections, then my argument can be adjusted, mutatis mutandis, for those properties. If there are not any transcendental properties which are not perfections, then transcendental properties just seems to be semantically equivalent to perfection, and your insistence that my argument needs to rely on transcendental properties seems to be question begging.

Anyways, what does it even mean to be transcendental? Just without restrictions? It’s not even clear to me that truth lacks any category restrictions. My desk can hardly be said to true or false, even though it’s brown, angular, and underneath my monitor. Moreover, I think we have good reason to think that there are sentences which cannot be true, like “This sentence is false” (pace Graham Priest).

I don’t think you need share a particular metaphysics to recognise that lying is an absence of truth, just as dark is an absence of light.

You do need a particular metaphysical view to realize that those things don’t constitute a property.

Hi everyone,
I’m back from reunions and have some catching up to do. I’ll try to reference responses by comment number to keep track. Also, I’m going to suggest that -after a few responses- we try to prune threads that are too tangential so that we can stay on the original topic “Do atheists have any objective reason to value the truth?”
-Neil

lambda.calc,
In comment 186, you write:

So here’s the question. Do you think that any normative fact, alone, can ground any obligations? The following seems pretty obvious to me: “If it is true that we should keep our promises, then we’re obligated to keep any promises we make.” To deny that norms generate obligations, in at least some instances, seems to me to be a pretty radical form of skepticism about normativity.

So here’s the question. Do you think that any normative fact, alone, can ground any obligations? The following seems pretty obvious to me: “If it is true that we should keep our promises, then we’re obligated to keep any promises we make.” To deny that norms generate obligations, in at least some instances, seems to me to be a pretty radical form of skepticism about normativity.

I agree that statements like “lying is wrong” have truth values. Indeed, this is one of the defining features of moral realism.

You then write that affirming the truth of statements like “You should not lie” can ground obligation. But here, I think you are wrong. I think that whenever one uses the word “should” unconditionally (i.e. “you should not lie”) rather than conditionally (i.e. “you should move your bishop on the diagonal if you are playing chess”), then you are by definition asserting a moral obligation. When we say “You should (unconditionally) not lie” we are really saying “You have the moral obligation to not lie.”

So to claim that “If it is true that we should keep our promises, then we’re obligated to keep any promises we make.” is actually a tautology. What you are saying is “If it is true that we are obligated to keep our promises, then we’re obligated to keep any promises we make.” This statement is merely a tautological observation about a moral obligation, not the grounds for it. It says nothing about where our moral obligation comes from; it merely claims that we do have one.

-Neil

lambda.calc,
In comment 200, you write:

One important bit though, is that I think that if you want your case to be as strong as possible, then you should pick the strongest opponents. That’s part of what I was trying to get at by charity earlier, sometimes I forget that certain ways of speaking are peculiar to anglophone philosophy. So if the goal of the arguments you guys are giving is to convince others that God is necessary to ground the claim that “We should believe what is true” you really ought to focus on atheist theories which attempt to defend the claim. Not to suggest that you haven’t, but I think it’s safe to say that Rorty is ruled out right from the start as being a suitable candidate for analysis.

Totally agreed. But remember, I wasn’t picking Rorty as some paragon of atheistic philosophy (indeed, I didn’t even mention him until 400+ comments into my original question). I merely used him as one clear example of someone whose ideas undermine your claims about the cognitive nature of “belief.” It seems to me that you are defining belief to be “the state of thinking that something is true” which is exactly why a sentence like “I believe that it is snowing outside even though I think that it is not snowing outside” strikes you rightly as nonsense. My only point is that millions of people claim that “we should believe according to what has instrumental value for us.” I agree that this stance strikes us all as crazy and incoherent. But it is a bit high-handed of us to assert that whatever these people are doing cognitively, they cannot possibly be “believing”, no matter how much they protest to the contrary.

-Neil

Neil @237, my apologies, I’m not at home in blogging comment threads of this length. My mistake.

I merely used him as one clear example of someone whose ideas undermine your claims about the cognitive nature of “belief.” It seems to me that you are defining belief to be “the state of thinking that something is true” which is exactly why a sentence like “I believe that it is snowing outside even though I think that it is not snowing outside” strikes you rightly as nonsense.

I don’t think I’m defining, I’m proposing an analysis of the concept. which is a pretty standard tool amongst philosophers. There might be different ways to conceptualize belief, but I think there are good reasons to think about belief the way I’ve proposed. I’ll be a little bit more clear about how I’m going through this pattern of reasoning.

First, I take it as a given that there are such things as beliefs. This is just a precondition for the intelligibility of your initial question. There are two natural places to start looking for a norm, the nature of truth, and the nature of belief. So I started with belief, (tacitly) I asked, what special role does belief play? Best way to go about responding that is to engage in a little thought experiment, to think about what my cognitive life would be like, were I to be unable to believe anything. What would be missing is the ability to seriously commit to anything’s genuinely being the case, after all I could still suppose, hypothesize, fear, hope etc. So that presents itself as the best analysis of belief. In order for something to be true, it has to be the case. Thus, the cognitive role that belief plays just is taking something to be true.

Is anything amiss in that pattern of reasoning? I admit people could conceptualize belief differently. This isn’t something that’s meant to be immediate. It’s only supposed to follow given careful thought about the nature of belief.

A proponent of Rorty could say, what really matters about belief is just desire. And I’d go, hmm, that’s interesting, what reason do you have to think that? I’m still kind of waiting for a response. Nobody has suggested that my proposed analysis of belief is mistaken in this thread. It could be, but can you suggest any reasons to think that it is? Beyond the fact that people have conjectured otherwise?

Here’s another thing worth noting on this point, look at my exchange with Steve from 201 onwards. If we expand the attitude of belief to do something in addition to taking to be true, then it seems to introduce an ambiguity which just isn’t present in our language.

lambda.calc

You do need a particular metaphysical view to realize that those things don’t constitute a property.

Tom specifically referenced classical theology in his original comment which is based on classical metaphysics not modern.

Anyways, what does it even mean to be transcendental?

Being is a transcendental, something that is above every genus. The others are thing, one, something, true and good, and each is convertible with being in the sense that each designates the same thing under a different aspect. ie. The transcendentals differ in sense not reference.

It’s not even clear to me that truth lacks any category restrictions. My desk can hardly be said to true or false, even though it’s brown, angular, and underneath my monitor. Moreover, I think we have good reason to think that there are sentences which cannot be true, like “This sentence is false” (pace Graham Priest).

That’s because modern philosophers consider true to be an attribute confined to beliefs and propositions. True is a proposition or belief what conforms to reality and false is what doesn’t. For Aquinas a thing is true to the extent that it conforms to the ideal defined by it’s essence. Truth is something that a thing has in varying degrees.

The arguments are detailed but they are not as you suggest ad hoc. The upshot of this is that there is no fact-value distinction problem in classical theology and God is the source of all being, all truth and all goodness.

lambda.calc

Just curious what your position is on whether we are obligated to avoid holding false beliefs as much as we are able?

Tom,
To clarify, when I wrote “[The statement a of moral fact] says nothing about where our moral obligation comes from; it merely claims that we do have one,” I was writing from the perspective of a moral realist who affirms that we have moral obligations. For instance, the statement “You should keep your promises” rightly affirms a moral obligation. But I disagree with lambda.calc’s conclusion that this affirmation generates or grounds the moral obligation itself.

In the same way, I can affirm the true statement “My son is obligated to get a screwdriver from the garage.” Yet this statement says nothing about why he is obligated to do so or what grounds this obligation.

-Neil

lambda.calc,
Ok, now that I’ve tried to respond to a few of the other issues, I want to go back and focus on the one that is most directly related to our original question: “On atheism, is there any objective value or obligation for us to believe the truth?” I raised this question in the context of a debate between a Christian and an atheist to see how the atheist might respond. Your response was quite interesting and I think was the first one so far to directly challenge the question. You said (comment 160)

Beliefs about God are formed using some pretty complex processes, we generally have an interest in knowing whether or not we’ve got the right beliefs as a result of those processes. After all, if we turn those processes to other ends we have, we want to know if they still work there. Moreover, I think most believers and disbelieves alike would agree that believing in the Christian God has practical consequences. I would certainly like to know if I’ve been getting it wrong, either in my belief in the Christian God or my disbelief.

I summarized your position as (comment 163):

You’re basically saying “belief in God is so tied to our ‘belief-forming apparatus’ that it will affect our ability to obtain what we value regardless of what it is that we value.”

In other words, you are arguing that the vast majorty of people have goals which will be furthered by them holding true beliefs and hindered by them holding false beliefs. Because belief in God is a very complex problem involving every part of our mental functioning, it would be extremely hard to falsely believe or falsely disbelieve in God without damaging our truth-evaluating apparatus. As a result, we should care about the actual truth of God’s existence. As I said, I thought this approach was quite interesting. Here’s the rebuttal I would make in a debate:

“Before examining my opponent’s claims, I would like to point out a valuable area of agreement between us. My original thesis was that atheism provides no objective reason for us think that believing the truth is inherently valuable or obligatory. Here we agree. The response he gave is a purely pragmatic one. He is arguing that, relative to your own personal goals whatever they may be, it is highly likely that you should value the truth about God’s existence. That is, we both agree that on atheism, believing the truth is not inherently valuable or obligatory. But he is arguing that, for most of you, believing the truth about God is very likely to indirectly help you achieve your personal goals. He argues that your goals probably depend on having a well-functioning reasoning appartus that yields true beliefs rather than false ones. So you ought to believe the truth about God’s existence not primarily because it is true, but beacuse it is indirectly related to having a well-functioning reasoning apparatus, which will help you achieve your goals. I want to emphasize this point, not only beause we agree on it, but because it stands in such stark contrast to the Christian position. We agree that on atheism, believing the truth is neither objectively valuable or obligatory. In contrast, if Christianity is true, then believing the truth is both objectively valuable and obligatory.

Next, I’d like to challenge in several ways my opponents assertion that the vast majority of you ought to value the truth about God’s existence for purely pragmatic reasons.

First, my opponent’s position depends on the assertion that it is cognitively impossible to believe what we think to be false. The main problem with this assertion is that we never know with complete certainty whether any non-axiomatic statement is true or false. Take a statement as intuitively obvious as “the objective universe exists.” Even here, I would argue that we cannot be completely certain of the truth of this statement, given that there is some exceedingly small probability that we are a brain floating in a vat or a man trapped in a Matrix-like world of illusion. Thus, we never “know” a statement to be false; we can only suspect that a statement is likely to be false with varying degrees of cognitive certainty. But it is obviously cognitively possible to believe statements which we merely suspect might be false with 51% certainty. Thus, my opponent needs to tell us at what level of certainty this cognitive possibility becomes an impossibility. Because if “believing what I think to be false” is _not_ a cognitive impossibility, then there is at least a possibility that I can believe what I think to be false. In this case, the door is suddenly reopened to belief in known false statements for purely pragmatic reasons.

Second, my opponent’s position is obviously untenable in numerous particular situations. For instance, I think it is safe to assume that all of you value personal happiness. I think it is also safe to assume that all of you will die. Now consider how you will feel when lying on your deathbed. Belief that death is the entryway to eternal bliss will obviously result in far more personal happiness than the belief that death is eternal annihilation, regardless of which belief is true. In addition, on your deathbed, you will not need to be at all afraid of the potential consequences of having a malfunctioning truth-perceiving apparatus. So if pragmatic considerations are our only considerations, it is clear that a purely pragmatic person should believe in an afterlife with no regard at all for the truth of this claim. However, it is also obvious that no one can simply “turn on” a belief in the afterlife the day before they die. They will have to actually come to this belief long before they die to derive any comfort from it when they do die. How long do they need to believe in some kind of afterlife for it to bring them dying comfort? That is not for me to say. I just want to point out that if we are relying only on pragmatism to provide value for true statements, then we cannot avoid these kind of calculations, no matter how mercenary they may feel. We can’t simply say: this issue is important, therefore almost everyone ought to value the truth about it. Even important issues are subject to precisely the calculations I’ve outlined above.

Third, I think that if we are relying purely on pragmatism to provide value for our beliefs, there is an extremely easy way to believe whatever we choose to believe, whether or not it is true. We need only consider evidence which supports our beliefs and ignore all counter-evidence. This tendency is known as “confirmation bias” and is normally viewed as a significant problem in many fields. But if we are a pragmatist, we can quickly turn this tendency into an unassailable advantage. For instance, let’s say I realize that belief in an afterlife of infinite bliss will be greatly comforting to me throughout my life. In that case, I can simply examine only evidence which confirms my desired belief, and avoid all counterevidence. Note that this avoidance of counterevidence can be completely conscious and explicit, so that I do not need to fear damaging my reasoning-apparatus. I need only avoid any serious consideration of it to preserve my desired beliefs.

I hope all of this sounds insane and absolutely revolting to you. It does to me. I don’t doubt that almost all of you do instrinsically value the truth. But my opponent and I agree that on atheism, you have no objective basis for doing so. If atheism is true, then the most consistent position you can take is to abandon your superstitious belief in the sanctity and inherent value of the truth and embrace the purely pramgatic approach described above.

But lastly, let me lay all of my cards on the table. I have to confess that tonight, I will not be appealing to your goals, to your personal desires, or to your pragmatic concerns. The Christian worldview has an entirely different view of truth: that truth is intrinsically good and obligatory whether or not it matches our desires. In all likelihood, the truth of the gospel will probably be wildly offensive and distasteful to you. But I am coming to you tonight to commend Christianity to you not because you will like it, but because it is true. Chistianity does not promise to give us what we desire. It promises to give us what we need. Christianity promises to change our desires so that they conform to what is truly good and to what will truly satisfy us.”

I think that’s how I would respond to lambda.calc’s argument in a debate. I think point #3 is the strongest, but I’d like to hear about how you might respond to all of them.

-Neil

Neil, I’m going to get to your posts, I think I can clarify some confusion on Tom’s part a little bit more quickly.

You seem to think B follows necessarily from A, but I don’t see that.

Let me explain my argument a little more carefully. Neil stated that any conditional of the following form is a tautology: “If you should perform an act, then you are obligated to perform that act”. I said, cool, let’s run with that. Do you have any reasons to dispute this?

So, suppose we have some motivating reasons that a particular should claim, let’s call it Norm, is true. Norm according to Neil’s assertion, implies an obligation, Ob. Since it’s a tautology, it does so with logical necessity.

Now suppose we have some motivating reasons to think that Norm is true. We need not specify those motivating reasons, they can be pragmatic considerations, natural facts, non-natural facts etc. Perhaps even intuitions, or we can arrive at Norm through some kind of process. I don’t need to be specific.

Here’s the cool part, if we have motivating reasons to think that Norm is true, then we have motivating reasons to think that Ob is true, since we know that if Norm is true, then Ob is true. It just follows from Neil’s notion that any should claim tautologically implies an obligation.

The pattern of inference is valid, unless you can explicitly point out a fallacy made in this argument. You could always deny that there are any reasons to think that any should claim is true. But that’s pretty hardcore scepticism.

Moreover, if you think that the two statements are tautologically equivalent, you can run the above argument, mutatis mutandis, from obligations to shoulds.

Does that clarify what I was up to? There’s no equivocation between reasons of logical necessity and motivating reasons. Nothing going on at the level of grounding. And no explicit mention of pragmatism.

This is just mean to be a general fact: If we have motivating reasons to believe one thing, and we know that thing implies another, then the motivation we have for believing the first is motivation for believing the second.

Neil @241, 244,

(It’s late, and I’m a tad tired, so please pardon any typos or syntactical errors.)

Point taken. I should have been explicit in the antecedent of the conditional that they are motivational reasons for us. You cannot, however, rest easily on this point, since the schema of going from Norm to Ob is available to anyone who believes in normative facts. If should claims tautologically imply ought claims, then we have reason to believe in moral obligations, given that we have reason to believe in should claims.

Part of what I’ve been trying to show in the remainder of the thread is that we need to have some independent conception of normative facts/properties in order to meaningfully think that God is perfect.

God’s motivation need not be our motivation. But we need to have some motivation to think that God is perfect, and that certain qualities are perfections. Otherwise, I think it’s just arbitrary to believe as such. Your example is a good case where I can try to make this point.

To be fair, I can see that I hadn’t responded to it. I had honestly meant to, since i thought it was illustrative of some points. And it ties into some points I had wanted to make. The discussion on this thread is ranging wider than I can honestly handle for too much longer (this evening at least!).

It’s clear that in such an example, the child has no obligation to obey his father simpliciter. If he had commanded the child to strike his sister, he would have no obligation to do so. Why? Some further fact about what he should do. Seems to me, at the very least, we should only obey those commands which are in line with broader normative facts.

Now, do you think that in the father/son case, the son has the duty to follow the command, if the command is totally arbitrary, given merely on his fathers whim? Picture the father telling the son to hop on one leg, purely for the father’s amusement. When the son asks why he should do so, the father replies, “It’s merely my nature to tell you to do this!” Is the child really obligated to do so?

Under the theory you and Tom are promoting, God seems to be standing in a similar fashion. But suppose we have some independent motivation for believing in norms.

Pardon any errors in syntax. I’ll formulate my reply to your lengthy response to my point of view tomorrow.

lambda.calc,

Just a clarification. When I wrote “truth is intrinsically good and obligatory whether or not it matches our desires” the word “intrinsically” modifies “good” not “obligatory.” Also, make sure you don’t confuse value and obligation. Things are good because they are consistent with God’s nature. Things are obligatory because God has commanded them. So things can be good and yet not obligatory.

Also, when I say “intrinsically” I should be understood as contrasting something which is instiscially good in itself (because it is consistent with God’s character), to something which is good for extrinsic pragmatic reasons (e.g. because it helps me achieve my goals).

Does that clarify?

-Neil

lambda.calc (in response to 253),

Recall that your objection to the question “on atheism, why should we believe what is true?” was first an acknowledgement that we have no objective obligation to believe (or to purse) what is true. However, you made the interesting case that all of us have subjective goals whose attainment would be facilitated by having a true representation of reality. Thus, we should subjectively care about what is actually true about God because believing what is false about God’s existence would necessitate a faulty truth-perceiving apparatus. Your objection was a way to show that -regardless of our specific goals- it is fair to assume that they will all be facilitated by believing the truth about God.

In my second point, I am merely showing that this assertion is false: that believing what is true it will not always help us achieve our goals. For instance, if atheism is true, then the goals of a person on their deathbed will not be facilitated by a true belief in the afterlife.

I then note that we can not (i.e. “are not psychologically able to”) instantaneously “turn on” a belief in the afterlife, and you agree. However, I think you are confusing “can not” with “should not.” In my second point, I am showing that if we have sufficient foresight, we should recognize the desireablility of belief in the afterlife when we die and should plan accordingly. As a result, we cannot make your assumption that “almost everyone’s goals will be facilitated by a belief in the truth.” On the contrary, I’m showing that there is at least one example in which someone’s belief will not be facilitated by a belief in the truth. Moreover, given that it is cognitively difficult (if not impossible) to “turn on” a belief instantaneously, this knowledge ought to affect which ideas we pursue even in the present.

-Neil

I’m not sure what “biting the bullet” on the counterfactual means. You asked “if God had not commanded us to believe the truth, then should we [i.e. would we be obligated] to believe the truth?” I would say no, we would not be obligated, although ‘believing the truth’ would still be good. In fact, we’d already established that there are truths which we are not obligated by God to believe. For instance, God does not obligate us to believe the multiplication table! It is good to believe the multiplication table, but it is not obligatory.

As to why we think consistency with God’s nature is good, I’m not sure if there is some subtle point here that I am missing, but I would say that this is what “good” means. I think it always helps to rephrase the question in terms of Platonic ideals. Obviously, we would never ask the question: “Why think that consistency with ‘the Good’ is good?” So why do we feel that the question is meaningful when asked about God? If both ‘the Good’ and God are claimed (by Platonists and theists, respectively) to be the standard of goodness, then aren’t both questions equally meaningless?

-Neil

Not exactly, I did respond to your question with reasons as to why it isn’t that simple. If you’ll let me finish my next post, I will address why this is a misconception of my view, yet again.

So, recall that the context of all this is in the debate over God’s existence. The theist, as I take it, thinks that belief in God is justified as a result of good argumentation. That is, they think that they can provide reasons for us to think it’s true. So a theist thinks that they can convince anyone, who’s using the right sort of tools that belief in God is justified.

I take it that the theist and atheist agree that if an argument is sound, we should believe the conclusion of the argument. The theist claims to have sound argumentation for God’s existence. Since our beliefs aim at getting things right, if there’s a salient possibility that our beliefs are mistaken then we should be open to revising those beliefs so they’re more likely to be true.

When we have any genuine disagreement, this sort of situation obtains: someone, who we think is usually gets things right with beliefs is coming from the same sort of evidence as I am, is coming to a different conclusion. But things like non-contradiction seem like pretty high-level truths, so one of us must be right. Let’s examine their reasons for disagreeing with me, so we can find out whether or not the beliefs we are antecedently committed to are actually true.

Pragmatism doesn’t enter in, it just follows from some facts about belief, disagreement and the world. And as a consequence of this, much of your debate-style reply is mistaken.

lambda.calc,
I’m not at all following comment 258. Certainly, my original question was posed in the context of a debate. But the question was “On atheism, is ‘believing the truth’ objectively good or obligatory?” I have never questioned that the the vast majority of people do value truth. But I am asking whether -on atheism- they have any grounds for valuing truth or thinking that it is obligatory. You agreed that there is no objective value or obligation for us to believe the truth, but advanced the creative solution that all human beings should value the truth for purely subjective reasons because achieving our personal goals are almost always dependent on having true beliefs about reality. I challenged this assertion in my comment #246 and I was curious to see how you’d respond to it.

Now I might be missing something, but I don’t see that you’ve actually addressed any of my points in comment #246. Your latest response makes assertions like:

I take it that the theist and atheist agree that if an argument is sound, we should believe the conclusion of the argument.

Since our beliefs aim at getting things right, if there’s a salient possibility that our beliefs are mistaken then we should be open to revising those beliefs so they’re more likely to be true.

Pragmatism doesn’t enter in, it just follows from some facts about belief, disagreement and the world

But these comments simply restate what we have already agreed upon: that both atheists and theists do actually value truth. But the question of whether there is any basis on atheism to value truth is not addressed. Perhaps it would be helpful to just draft a response to my comment #246 as if you were actually in a debate? If I addressed the audience with comment #246, what would you say to support your original contention that although there are no objective reasons for them to value truth, there are still subjective reasons for them to value the truth?

-Neil

You agreed that there is no objective value or obligation for us to believe the truth, but advanced the creative solution that all human beings should value the truth for purely subjective reasons because achieving our personal goals are almost always dependent on having true beliefs about reality.

If I said this at all, then I was mistaken. As it stands, I don’t think I’ve said this. My entire purpose in this thread has been to defend the claim that the atheist can, with good reasons, endorse the claim that we should believe what is true.

You understand that “Should we believe the truth?” and “Are there any truths we should pursue?” are two distinct questions, right?

Neil and lambda.calc — I wanted to weigh in for a second.

I see a bit of going round and round. May I suggest a common ground: would you both agree with the following

The original question is, “are atheists entitled to say someone should believe the truth?” I think the answer rests on the definition of “should”, “believe”, and “truth”.

Believe:
I think we can all agree on the idea of “believe” — that is, to take something to be true, or have an attitude towards it that it is true. Having such an attitude precludes someone from having an opposite attitude towards it at the same time (that it is false) — although people have been known to oscillate back and forth, they don’t hold opposing beliefs at the same time.

Truth:
We cannot be sure that almost anything is 100% true, save maybe for mathematical truths. Would you you guys hold to the logical positivist stance on this issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism that things which are true by agreed upon definition or by manipulating symbols in a commonly agreed upon language (which is also used for the definition) can be called “true” in the actual sense of being true, whereas all other things are conditional upon some external axioms which try to map the real world into this language, and which are not necessarily true but may be accepted as true by both sides. The sides can be mistaken, and if they ever find that they can derive a contradiction using the operations of their language, then they realize that one of their “axioms” is wrong. That is to say, it must be one of the axioms and not the definitions or the language itself, since if that is wrong, we might as well abandon all hope of reasoning.

Finally, we get to the question of “Should”. To say someone “should” do something, without any further follow-up, implies an absolute obligation or an unstated assumption. Let’s consider the case of the absolute obligation. What do we mean by an “absolute” obligation? In view of our framework above, it either follows from an agreed upon definition of “absolute obligation”, or a combination of agreed upon definitions and operations in our logical language, or a combination of those along with agreed upon axioms about the real world (which are not definitions). I don’t think that every atheist will agree on the same axioms with theists. But I think that atheists and theists have a good chance to agree on definitions (which after all are a way of naming things). However, the axiom that such-and-such theoretical concept is applicable to the real world may be the area where the theist and atheist disagrees. I would venture so far as to say that many theists would disagree among themselves, and many atheists also.

So there is our problem. First you must define “absolute obligation” in an agreed upon way. Then, you can operate with it. However, if I don’t believe that the concept of “absolute obligation” is useful as a scientific to describe people’s actual behavior (that is to say, it is a hypothesis that can be falsified by observing what actually happens), then I may tell you, “this was an interesting philosophical exercise, but so what?”

On the other hand, if obligation is conditional upon a desire, which is how I prefer to define obligation, then I am pretty impressed by how this concept is useful in describing people’s behavior. If you want X to happen, you are obligated to do Y. If you don’t do Y, you shouldn’t complain when X doesn’t happen.

So my short answer to your question, Neil, is that the atheist is entitled to say, “If you guys want to be thought of as rational by others, you should display rational reasoning. And if you want to be thought of as reasonable by others, you should appear reasonable. Since it is easier to actually be rational than simply keep up appearances of rationality, it might be good to cultivate a habit of engaging with subjects rationally. Therefore, if I provide good reasons for you to believe something, you should either believe it or demonstrate better reasons not to believe it.”

The reason I look at it this way is because it seems to be actionable and useful in reality. For example, if the atheist tells you something that challenges your whole worldview, but there is a volcano erupting nearby and both of you have to run, then the “absolute obligation” to believe the truth concept is not as useful as the “obligation out of desire” concept. Yes, you may want to appear rational to people in general, and cultivate a habit of appearing rational to everyone, in particular the atheist. But instead of debating, you’d rather run and save your life. You may never get a chance to debate the atheist again, but the desire to save your life is stronger, therefore you must do that. In my system, obligations are relative and thus you can figure out which obligation is more important. If you deal with “absolute obligations” as your primary way of thinking, this kind of decision making becomes harder to do.

Neil: what don’t you like about my definition of “should”?

Hey, lambda. I meant Neil, because he wanted a clearer definition of “should”. I gave this definition in the last thread when I answered his question. I am wondering if he is fine with accepting this definition and working with it. I think it’s useful in real life.

I agree with you that “should” can be binary relation in the form “X should Y”, but I prefer not to use this “absolute” type of should, but rather have a ternary relation: “If X wants Z, they should Y”. I would answer Neil’s original question simply by stating that “Z” is “to appear rational” or “to be considered rational”. Just because they do Y doesn’t mean Z will happen, but at least they would have fulfilled their obligation and the reason Z doesn’t happen is no longer “their fault”. In this sense, “If X does Y, Z will happen” can take the form of a contract, or a covenant in which X participates. X might want to rely on the covenant and it will inform X’s actions if X wants Z.

Tom: Yeah, I had given Neil this definition in the last thread, but although he said he agreed with me, he didn’t really seem satisfied with simply running with this definition. My comment was in response to what Neil said:

If you disagree with my summary of your position, then I think you need to clarify what you mean by “should.”

Since I had just entered the conversation, I addressed this by saying, Neil, what don’t you like about MY definition of should (the one I had introduced in the last thread and just restated in this thread).

Now, as to what you were saying regarding the definition being “hopelessly relativistic”, etc. First of all, it is interesting that you attach the feeling of hopelessness to something that is relativistic. As I pointed out, a relativistic approach allows you to escape a volcano because your desire to preserve your life and avoid a painful death in lava is almost on the level of a need, whereas your desire to get to the bottom of an argument and dig for the truth is less acutely felt in the moment. Indeed, these desires are well aligned with your “instincts” for life preservation. An evolutionary theorist would point out that those with a propensity to discuss the truth rather than run in the face of an erupting volcano had a smaller genetic fitness than those who didn’t. Regardless, the fact that something is relative to a desire does not necessarily make things “hopeless”. In fact, the concept of “If X wants Z, he should Y” seems to explain what happens in reality much more than the concept of “X should Y, period.”

Neil: Yes, this definition is conditional upon what the organism / person wants. And I think we are agreed. I think your (and Tom’s) disagreement with me lies in something else — perhaps Tom can explain why he considers the ternary relation so “hopeless” a concept.

I hardly think that we are “back to extreme pragmatism”. Can you define what you mean by that?

I can give you a couple examples that strongly support my view.

Example 1)

A monkey wants a banana. The monkey should press a lever and get the banana. This makes sense.
How does it make sense to say simply and absolutely, “The monkey should press the lever!” Any animal with the ability to make choices and yet no advanced rational thinking does not make for a good subject X for propositions of the form “X should Y”. Why not? You tell me. What is the grounding for X’s absolute obligation?

Example 2)

This one would strike home with a lot of Christians.

Suppose a rather perverse religion was true: that the creator of the world did speak to people, and said to them that they will all go to heaven and have eternal peace and happiness if they ignored his decrees and did as they wished. However, he gave very clear commandments to do certain things, and also explained that by doing so, they earn the reward of bodily suffering after death. On your view, one has an obligation to do what one is commanded by the creator of the world, regardless of whether one thinks it is good or not. So therefore, you would have to admit that if this was true, everyone would have the obligation to earn as much suffering as possible after death.

You could reply, “but why would the creator do such a thing?” And I would say, who are you to judge whether this is good or not? It is by definition good because the creator said so. Maybe you don’t understand it, but that is the way it is.

I contend that Christians and most people would never follow such a religion. Yes, theoretically their obligation would be to earn as much bodily suffering as they are able to. But the real reason many Christians try to follow in Christ’s footsteps is because they want to get the reward of eternal life in Heaven, and avoid hell.

I think even you as a Christian would have to admit that my concept of “X should do Y if he wants Z” seems to fit reality better.

Let me just say – I think there are more things involved than just this. We pray to God because it is good for us. God doesn’t need anything. But these are theological concepts. I just wanted to show that in the real world, the ternary relation is more useful at explaining it. There is nothing “hopeless” about it.

Neil, there’s nothing inconsistent between either pair of statements. If you don’t understand that, you need to reread those posts or tell me what it is about the statements that you think is inconsistent.

Between 160 and 265, the cognitive impossibility is to believe that P is false while taking P to be true. This is distinct from believing P to be false when P is, in fact true. How do you not grasp that? What is unclear about that?

And between 265 and 262, a similar situation obtains. I’ve said that true beliefs will facilitate any goal. This isn’t a claim about why they’re valuable. Where’s the inconsistency? This strikes me as being perfectly clear.

As to the way we frame the debate, I took it that “should” was to be understood as obligatory. If we should believe the truth, objectively, then we are objectively obligated to believe the truth. Writing ‘should’ just saves keystrokes. (Edit: fixed a use-mention error with should)

Neil: as to your other things:

The only question was whether ‘believing the truth’ could be objectively good or obligatory on atheism.

I think that “absolutely obligatory” is different than “objectively obligatory”. Something could be objectively obligatory in the sense I have defined obligation. However, you have not really defined what it means that “X is obligated to Y” in terms of other concepts.

Relative obligation is really useful, because it helps us reason as to what action we should take, using the information we have. Absolute obligation grounded in something outside of us that we don’t have easy access to is a problem. It’s hard enough to research all the laws and permits when building a wine cellar for your house. Imagine if for every action we would have to consult the word of the Divine Lawgiver and figure out exactly what it says in a particular situation. This is assuming that the Divine Lawgiver gave us the law in its entirety and we can actually perfectly understand and interpret the law. I don’t think anyone thinks this is the case. Therefore, on Divine Command theory, human beings are hopelessly lost as to what they are obligated to do, in many areas (such as copyright infringement, or putting bells on bicycles) which may have a Divine command that we simply don’t know about.

For example, if the Nazis take over my university and say “Anyone who affirms logical syllogisms will be executed,” then my desire to live will obviously overpower my desire to appear rational.

Perhaps *your* desire to live would be stronger, but there are many people who desire to go down fighting for a consistent and rational world as they perceive it. They may die a martyr’s death and they may resist the regime, at the cost of their own lives, and in the hope that in the end, rationality will win. Because they want rationality to win more than they want to live under such a regime.

Who said “give me liberty or give me death”? Clearly this person wanted liberty more than death. Your stance might be different. Should you do what this guy did? Should he do what you did? It’s totally dependent on who you talk to.

Tom,

Thanks for the insightful comment.

So again, to repeat, I propose that the question of interest is whether, on atheism, there is some objective moral obligation to pursue the truth about whether God exists (and if so, what is God like?). If we focus the question there we can be more productive.

As I said in my intial post, I wonder whether or not it’s best characterized as moral, but there is an obligation to believe the truth (in the sense I’ve been trying to elaborate on in this thread). I’m not sure if there is an obligation to pursue the truth regarding God’s existence that is independent from this basic norm. This is what my talk of ‘belief forming apparatus’ was supposed to cover.

Part of the whole background to the debate is that the theist believes that he has good reason to believe the truth of T. Moreover, he takes it that these reasons are available to others. As seems to be the case amongst apologists, theists seem to think that there are both valid and sound arguments for God’s existence.

Do we agree that atheists can think that sound arguments track the truth? Even if only as some kind of high level, a posteriori belief?

When confronted with a theist, the atheist is confronted with someone who thinks that according to tools the atheist accepts, there are reasons to think that T is true. The atheist finds that he doesn’t have the belief, or even stronger, believes that T is false. If the theist is correct, then according to the basic norm “we should believe the truth”.

It’s a contingent norm, but it sure strikes me as an objective obligation, especially if we think that we are right to persist in refraining from belief in T.

Tom,

You ask:

lambda.calc, do you accept the relativistic approach to obligation Greg is propounding here? I think you said earlier that you’re not a relativist.

I’m not a relativist, but to be quite honest, I’ll have to reread the discussion a bit more carefully. I’ve really only been devoting my efforts to our discussion.

(Edit: I think that you might be having a merely verbal dispute, I take it we all agree that there are true statements of the form: “If a person desires that X, then they should Y.” Greg seems to be committed to their objective truth. And I agree with him on that point. I don’t think that exhausts all true propositions that contain the “should” relation, which is where we disagree. Merely because something is messy is no reason to think that it’s not objective, but I haven’t followed all the threads of this dispute.

Anyways we should all note that being engaged in such a long discussion is tiring. And that we all have a limited capacity to engage in this discussion. This is part of why I suggested upthread that Neil, Tom and myself move our discussion to email. That way we’re free to move at a more relaxed pace. It’s your blog Tom, and you can do as you will.)

Tom: I have likewise addressed your position taken generally. Your argument assumes that the binary relation “A should B!” is well defined, and works well with other concepts. I have pointed out several reasons why I don’t yet agree. One of them is that we don’t actually know what God told us to do. Another is that absolute (note: not the same as objective) obligation does not admit being overridden, by definition of absolute. A third is that I do not see how you ground “A should B!” in a way that is consistent with what we observe in the real world. How about we focus on just these three reasons. So I don’t see what the use is of criticizing the alternative, or calling it “hopelessly relativistic”. At least I have defined it in terms of other concepts, illustrated how it would apply in real life situations, and so on.

I can continue showing you the use of the ternary relation “A should B if he wants C” and how it can be used to build an entire worldview simply based on comparisons of needs and wants.

The short answer to “what if A says they don’t really want C” is to show A that they are wrong, and they do really want C. Often, people want something that’s not good for them e.g. drugs . But if they realize that they actually need health, and drugs take away their health, then they can compare the levels of desire and figure out what the more important obligation is based on that. This is how everyone reasons. Sometimes people change their mind about their obligations because they become better aware of their desires. Jesus said to leave behind your mother and father, your gold, etc. and follow him. If you realize you desire eternal life more than gold and family, then you do it!

The same goes for the unreasoning monkey, which is too remote from human reality to function as an example for humans.

Let’s focus on this one example. Are you in agreement with me, then, that you don’t want to define “A should B!” for any B, when A is a non-human (monkey, dog, etc.)?

If so, how about if A is a human but is a 2 week old child? How about a 1 year old child? Perhaps this 1 year old child should “behave well” according to how you command this child to behave, but it doesn’t. Maybe it goes and rips up your books when you are not looking. You tell the child, “you shouldn’t do that!” How do you get through to the child — do you simply hope to appeal to their intellectual sense of obligation, or do you at the very least explain the consequences of doing that — or maybe spank the child in order to create an association: “want to avoid spanking? don’t rip books”.

The child is now 5 years old and you tell the child, “don’t talk to strangers!” Does this mean that when the child grows up to 30 and never talks to strangers, never meets anyone? Is it an objectively good thing to do to never talk to strangers, or is it an objectively bad thing to do? The answer is, all of these things are relative. How would you address this analysis?

lambda.calc

A long comment of mine I made in response to your previous post to me has gone missing. I’ll leave off the discussion of how God can be described as true because the conversation seems to have moved on and we can go back to that later if need be.

You said you agree that we should avoid holding false beliefs. You also stated earlier that we should believe instrumental truths. The problem with that in relation to the question of God is that in the vast majority of cases believing atheism is true will have no instrumental value for the Christian. The only person whose interests would necessarily be served are the atheists.

Regarding your comment at 6:23 pm, would you mind putting the pieces together into one new comment? I’m not seeing how it all fits together. Thanks.

No problem!

As I said in my intial post, I wonder whether or not it’s best characterized as moral, but there is an obligation to believe the truth (in the sense I’ve been trying to elaborate on in this thread). I’m not sure if there is an obligation to pursue the truth regarding God’s existence that is independent from this basic norm. This is what my talk of ‘belief forming apparatus’ was supposed to cover.

Part of the whole background to the debate is that the theist believes that he has good reason to believe the truth of T (the set of beliefs described by Tom). Moreover, he takes it that these reasons are available to others. As seems to be the case amongst apologists, theists seem to think that there are both valid and sound arguments for God’s existence.

Do we agree that atheists can think that sound arguments track the truth? Even if only as some kind of high level, a posteriori belief?

When confronted with a theist, the atheist is confronted with someone who thinks that according to tools the atheist accepts, there are reasons to think that T is true. The atheist finds that he doesn’t have the belief, or even stronger, believes that T is false. If the theist is correct, then according to the basic norm “we should believe the truth”, the atheist should revise his belief with respect either T, or the rules of inference. Revising the rules of inference isn’t to be done lightly, or in an ad hoc fashion; so it seems like they should care about this particular statement, T.

It’s a contingent norm, but it sure strikes me as an objective obligation, especially if we think that we are right to persist in refraining from belief in T.

Tom – can you please address my point about snowboarding?

How would you decide what to do, on theism, in areas where the Bible does not comment?

Tom,

Neil, lambda.calc, what do you think?

It’s certainly one option. Like I said, the comment thread is a convoluted place to carry on this discussion.

Neil

Why not simply state your position and say how you would answer the objections I raised in 246, as you started to do in 250, 251, 253, etc…? I’m not trying to trick you. I am really interested to see how an atheist would respond to these arguments.

I thought it was evident, and that you understood the mistake since you understood why what I had said was not contradictory. 246 relies on the assumption that I ground the claim that we should believe the truth in pragmatic reasons.

I have spent the last several posts disavowing this. And I have repeatedly made posts addressing inaccuracies with respect to my views. I have made several explicit reformulations of my argument in the past 100 posts. None of the arguments in 246 are good arguments against my view, because you clearly demonstrated that you did not understand my view.

Comment 262 explicitly disavows one of the key claims that 246 relies on. Are you that unaware of the content of your post? Do you really think that any of 246 is worth relying on, after I have shown that the way you set up my view is fundamentally in error?

Neil,

In my discussion of “should”, I said that it was a rough characterization of the concept and that I was hesitant to go into a full analysis of the concept, because I was afraid I would have to bring in machinery that would be out of place in this thread.

I suggested that talk of “should” and “is good” would be interchangeable through schemas like what I roughly sketched. Not the one that I roughly sketched, but like it. I said “good (maybe the best)” because I was hesitant about cases where there may be more than one permissible course of action, and then it seems we get into worries about disjunctive plans. There’s a mine-field here that relies on some tehnicalities in deontic logic, and I’m not entirely sure if I know enough, nor have the time to warrant a full on account.

One obvious way of going at it is to build up moral properties from deontic operators in the following way: Suppose the following is true for all agents, X and courses of actions Y, “If X should not Y then Y is bad for X”. You just have to fiddle with double negation to get “If X should not avoid Y then avoiding Y is wrong for X” which just seems to imply that Y is right for X.

I was worried that account might be too much, so I opted for a rough example of how a fully fledged account might look, but the just of it was that through schemas like the one I hastily sketched we can go from moral facts to obligations and vice versa. Especially since you were seeming to have some difficulty with the distinction between the two questions Tom introduced at the outset.

In any case, you’ve stated that “If X should Y, then X is obligated to Y” is a tautology. I’m fine with that. I don’t think I need any deeper analysis to really get at your initial argument.

lambda.calc

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by instrumental truths, can you clarrify?

If you mean what I think, then perhaps you should reread my discussion with Neil in posts 262,263,265 and 267. You seem to commit the same fundamental error that Neil made in 246.

Instrumental truths would be those truths that we would need to know if we were going to achieve our goals. I looked through your posts and I don’t think you have given a reason why (if atheism is true) the theist should examine their beliefs about God to determine whether they are true.

lambda.calc,
Melissa and I seem to be coming to the same conclusion that -despite your protests to the contrary- you are appealing to some kind of pragmatism to show how we are obligated to believe the truth. Perhaps two examples are in order.

Let’s say I am on my death bed. I believe that when I die, I will enter into an afterlife of infinite bliss. My main goal in life is personal happiness and this idea brings me immense comfort. Now, on your view, why am I obligated to reexamine the truth or falsity of this belief? Do I have this obligation? If so, what grounds it?

Now let’s say that I am a 20-year old atheist. My main goal in life is personal happiness and I realize that a belief in an afterlife of infinite bliss would be wonderfully comforting throughout life and in death. However, I do not currently have this belief because I think it is likely to be false. Now, why should I not surround myself with people who believe in such an afterlife, read nothing but pro-afterlife publications, and ignore all anti-afterlife evidence in the hopes that I will one day attain a belief in the afterlife. Am I obligated to not pursue this belief? If so, what grounds this obligation?

-Neil

Neil,

Melissa and I seem to be coming to the same conclusion that -despite your protests to the contrary- you are appealing to some kind of pragmatism to show how we are obligated to believe the truth. Perhaps two examples are in order.

Without textual evidence to support your analysis of my claims, I can’t help but think you’re not interested in discussing this matter in good faith. As such, I won’t discuss the matter of pragmatism any further until you either demonstrate that my view necessitates pragmatism with textual evidence or sound argument, or you admit that you grossly mischaracterize my view.

I think it’s perfectly evident that I was intending to ground an unconditional should Neil. My claim was that we should believe the truth, simpliciter. As evinced by post 34.

Either address what I’ve written, or I’m more than happy to walk away knowing that you refuse to argue in good faith.

This thread is really degenerating.

I can see lambda saying many times the same thing, but somehow it has no effect, and he repeats it again.

Neil, you are the one who has to clarify what you mean here. For example, you said to me:

Yes, your definition of “should” seems internally consistent. But as Tom pointed out, this definition of “should” is purely conditional and simply supports my point. We’ve never contested that we can have conditional, subjective reasons for believing the truth. The only question was whether ‘believing the truth’ could be objectively good or obligatory on atheism.

1. If you don’t contest that theists have conditional, subjective reasons for believing the truth, then why can’t atheists appeal to those reasons? Christians appeal to people’s desire to get to Heaven. Why can’t Atheists appear to people’s desire to make rational decisions?

2. What is YOUR definition of “should”, man? What do you mean by “objectively good”? Can you define this term? Is it the same as “absolutely good”? What is the claim here — that all things can be mapped to {“absolutely bad”, “absolutely good”} or that there are some things that can be labeled “absolutely good”? If a thing is so labeled, what would that imply? This is all relevant to understanding your definition of “absolute good”.

Would you agree if I say that God is the perfection of humor and some things are “absolutely funny”? Would you then deride our senses of humor as hopelessly relative to ourselves, and that the funniness of a joke can only be grounded in the humor of the perfect God?

3. How do we know YOUR version of “should” is internally consistent? I have a question. How can absolute obligations compete with one another?

Tom, I will give this one more try:

I think, Greg, that to say an obligation is conditional upon desires leads to hopelessly relativistic conceptions of obligation, on the one hand, for it could produce any number of horrific shoulds. Consider the person whose desire is that every person in the world who disagrees with his version of religion or secularism should be killed: that leads to a horrific sort of should.

Society has a desire to stop this person. This person goes to jail. There are people you won’t be able to convince to see your point of view. They may be psychopaths, or educated nihilists, absurdists, or whatever. There are lots of people out there. So I guess my question is, what is your point? You are the one telling me not to judge a system by its fallible practitioners.

Which leads us to the other hand: are there no shoulds attached to desire? Should Osama bin Laden have had different desires than he had? Most of us would say so. But if shoulds are based on desires, how can that question even make sense? All we can say is that we wish he had had different desires, but that never would have translated to any sort of should for bin Laden.

We have absolutely no idea if Osama was rational to begin with. After all a lot of what he did probably came out of belief in “absolute morality” rather than a relative one. Absolute morality is probably way more likely to put ideology ahead of human lives. It is not limited to theists. Communists, nazis, and many other groups had ideas about “absolute obligation” and lots of people got hurt.

That said, if we assume Osama was perfectly rational and did not believe in absolute obligation, but merely relative obligation, he probably would have acted to satisfy his own desires and needs. If what he was doing was satisfying his desires, but violating his needs (which are more important type of desires of the organism) then he should have stopped doing what he was doing.

Also, you shouldn’t discount the desires of society, to defend its citizens. Psychopaths are out there, and society enforces its laws and tries to stop crimes from happening. By living in a society, you enter into a social contract with it. Personally I find myself largely aligned with the ideas of John Rawls.

Greg,
When I say that we “unconditionally should do X,” I mean that God commands us to do X and that this imposes an obligation on us to do X.

I don’t think I have yet used the phrase “absolute good.” I have instead always talked about “objective good.” If X is “objectively good” I mean that it is consistent with God’s nature. Thus, things like truth, beauty, justice, and compassion are objectively good because they are consistent with God’s nature.

-Neil

lambda.calc

There is nothing inconsistent between believe truths which are important for our goals and saying that we should not believe falsehoods. I didn’t say that the only beliefs we should have are those which are of instrumental value. Not once. Do you even read my posts?

I didn’t claim there was anything inconsistent. My claim is that you haven’t shown why we should not believe falsehoods.

Here’s why this is a bad argument: my view is that if P is shown to be true, you should believe it unless there is something flawed with the demonstration.

That is your view but why should someone else agree with you?

If the belief is genuinely unwarranted, then the theist, under pain of having a belief which doesn’t accurately represent the world ought to revise his beliefs.

Why should the theist care about having a belief that doesn’t accurately represent the world? Why should he bother about finding out whether a belief is genuinely unwarranted or not? If the false belief is serving him well why bother testing it?

Greg,
I think it is clear that your questions are irrelevant to the topic of our discussion, which is “On atheism, is ‘believing the truth’ objectively good or obligatory?”

In all honesty, your behavior is bordering on trolling. No matter what we are discussing, you launch almost immediately into some thinly-veiled polemic against Christianity. I have to ask: why? Why on earth do you care? Why are you sitting up late at night trying to insult total strangers who have never done anything to hurt you? I think you need to honestly reflect on your motivations. If you’d like to email me personally and talk about what is bothering you, you are welcome to do so. But I don’t think that this blog is an appropriate place to vent your anger.

-Neil

I’m hooked on Facebook, I guess, because I keep looking for the “like” button for comments.

Overall, good work for so long, people. It is very difficult to maintain grace and decorum after so much back and forth without agreement. Congratulations.

No internet surprise that nothing was really resolved.

Listen, I am not angry at all. I personally enjoyed conversations on this blog until I was attacked by Steve Drake. But after that, I still enjoy discussing things. Why do you think I am being angry at Christianity? I am just trying to point out that you are asking for the impossible from atheists in your original question. I am not even an atheist myself, but I have been trying to point this out to you but you don’t seem to address it.

Greg,

That’s a tricky question because you have to define how you are using “should”. Last time when I asked you what’s authoritative to you, you said it doesn’t matter, and that I should tell you what I think. I did, and you gave me a one-liner saying “my point exactly” — whatever that means.

No I pointed out, repeatedly and a final time that you failed to respond to, that every “fact” you provided to support your claim was irrelevant to the claim you were making.

With Neil’s definition, it seems that “should” = “consistent with God’s nature”.

No Greg, Neil’s definition is that should refers to an obligation.

You asked Neil this question:

Well, what would you say to someone who interprets the Bible completely differently from you, and decides that what you consider morally bad is actually ok?

Well I’d say that one or both of us got it wrong.

To claim that Greg really isn’t here to learn anything, or already knows everything and should find another blog to espouse his philosophy of despair, or to use Biblical language as to who and why the Bible calls someone a fool, is not an attack, and for Greg to continue to say I ‘attacked’ him (#327 above) is dishonest to say the least and I will not sit here and let this pass. This must stop and desist.

Tom,
Fair enough. So it’s a matter of justification and Greg might perceive he has justification, and for that I apologize, but for him to continue to use me as an excuse for his posts and for what Neil calls his ‘polemic on Christianity’ is not justified and this should cease.

Greg,
In comment 316, you asked me for my definitions. You used all capital letters several times emphasizing that you wanted “MY” definitions. And I gave them to you. I told you what I mean as a Christian when I say “should” or “good.” I was telling you how I personally ground these concepts.

Now obviously, if I required lambda.calc to defend the Christian definitions of these concepts, he would not be able to do so without assuming Christianity. But of course, I have not been doing that. We have both been using general philosophical definitions. So, for instance, when a philospher says something is “objectively good” he means that it is morally good independent of what human beings think of it. Similarly, when a philospher says that “X should Y” he means that X has a binding duty or obligation to perform Y. Atheist moral philsophers are perfectly content to use phrases like “objectively good” and “should” in these senses and these are the definitions that lambda.calc and I have been discussing.

-Neil

Neil: right, but every time you push deeper and ask, e.g. for the “grounding” of “objective duty” you do not accept any answer that does not involve God’s nature.

So I guess I would like you to explain how you understand the concept of “grounding” something. What does it mean to “ground” objective duty? I ask this because every time someone has tried to do this, you call “relativism” or “pragmatism”. You have so far done this every time someone attempted to explain how their concept of objective duty fits into the world.

What is wrong, for example, if I just say, “let’s presuppose John Rawls’ framework, and that objective duty is whatever is consistent with what perfectly rational beings in a room decide, arguing through a veil of ignorance.” You may say, “but HOW is that binding on anyone?” and I would say, “it is just my presupposition.” What is wrong with that? What do you take “grounding” to mean?

I don’t see why you think I am angry with Christianity by asking these questions. While it is true that I keep pointing out that there are problems with the Christian grounding of “absolute morality”, that is because it is relevant to the topic. After all, the topic is a bit antagonistic to atheists, so what is wrong with pointing out analogous things the other way?

Neil, Tom, et al.

I don’t particularly have time at the moment to do justice to the various comments that have been made. Rest assured, I plan on addressing the points this evening. In particular, I want to reassure Neil that I will respond to the two cases, in addition to the thought experiment and points he raised in response to Tom. (edit: and of course, Tom’s thoughtful comment.)

Greg,
I would suggest that we don’t go to far down this trail, lest we distract from the main topic. But since your question is generally related to the original question, I’ll try to answer it. Tom, correct me if I make any obvious mistakes.

I would say that a concept is “grounded” if it corresponds or refers to some element of reality. This is why atheists, theists, and Christians can all make statements about the natural world; because these statements purport to be grounded in the objective natural universe, which we all accept. So statements like “This action will cause an increase in seratonin in the subject’s brain” is grounded in the natural world.

However, it is not agreed upon whether statements of value like “this action is good” can be grounded. Moral anti-realists would say no: value statements are not true or false because they cannot be grounded in reality. Immaterial entities like “values” or “obligations” do not exist. In contrast, moral realists would say that value statements can be grounded and can therefore be true or false. Naturalist moral realists would attempt to ground values in the natural world whereas idealists might ground values in the Platonic realm of forms or theists might ground values in God’s nature. But I’m not aware of anyone who says “This concept cannot be grounded at all. It in no way corresponds or refers to reality. But it is still true.”

All I am trying to show is that many philosophers, both Christians and atheists, make use of the concept of grounding. It is not as if, by requiring a statement to be grounded, I am forcing it to be grounded in God. If we happen to conclude that the particular concept of moral obligation can only be grounded in the existence of a personal, moral Obligator, then it seems to me that we must either (on atheism) discard the existence of moral obligation or accept some form of theism. But simply requiring grounding for all true concepts does not seem to be presupposing theism.

-Neil

Neil: okay, now I understand what you mean by grounding… namely, corresponding to reality.

Take a look at my comment 264, since I will be using that framework to analyze what is being said here. Do you agree that there are statements in our discussion which are true by agreed-upon definition, and also statements which are true by agreed-upon definition and agreed-upon manipulation of symbols in a logical language? These statements need not be linked to the real world, and indeed may not actually represent the state of the real world, but are still true in the sense that we agree they are true.

However, then there are “axioms” or “claims” linking these statements to the real world. This is what you call “grounding” things in the real world. For example, I might have the idea of Sherlock Holmes as a green monster the size of a planet, living on Earth. It has no real world counterpart, and so my claims about Sherlock Holmes may not have any useful applicability in the real world. Another example may be superstring theory. If we cannot show that it corresponds to the real world in any way, then all conclusions about it may be purely theoretical, and can turn out to work differently than our world works, even if they are made to be self-consistent. Would you agree?

If this is the case, I don’t see how you can speak of grounding moral values (or anything) in Platonic ideals or other things without making the claim that these things actually exist in the real world. For by your own definition, the grounding takes place by tying concepts to the real world, and not simply to other concepts, like Platonic ideals.

Therefore, by your own definition, I don’t see how you would accept having someone ground values in anything that they may think exists in the real world, but you don’t. And since you only believe in the Christian God, and not necessarily in any other religion’s conception of divinity or Platonic Ideals or anything else, that precludes someone producing a “grounding” that is acceptable to you, because you would not agree that the things which “ground” the concept exist in reality.

I think we would have to get past this point before we could continue with your question, of how one should ground moral obligations.

I would also like to point out one thing to you and Tom: I understand “absolute morality” as a different concept from “objective morality”. Certainly, all “absolute morality” is objective, but not the other way around.

Greg,
I think you’re confusing two distinct ideas. A philosopher can believe that entity X does not exist and still believe that if entity X did exist, then it could potentially ground concept Y. For instance, a naturalist could believe that a realm of Platonic forms does not exist, but could still concede that if such a realm did exist then it could ground concepts like “good”.

In the same way, I do not think that the Muslim conception of God does ground good, becuase I do not think that the Muslim conception of God exists. But I would certainly accept the idea that the Muslim conception of God could ground good. What I would object to is the idea that a concept could be true without any grounding at all, or that a concept could be grounded by an entity which does not appear able to ground it. For instance, I would challenge the idea that moral values can be grounded in human flourishing. Not because I disagree that values are grounded in human flourishing, but because I do not think it is possible to ground moral values in this way.

-Neil

Tom: I asked Neil for his definition of “grounding”, and I am using it in my subsequent comments. So when I say,

If this is the case, I don’t see how you can speak of grounding moral values (or anything) in Platonic ideals or other things without making the claim that these things actually exist in the real world. For by your own definition, the grounding takes place by tying concepts to the real world, and not simply to other concepts, like Platonic ideals.

I am referring to Neil’s definition earlier in the thread

I would say that a concept is “grounded” if it corresponds or refers to some element of reality. This is why atheists, theists, and Christians can all make statements about the natural world; because these statements purport to be grounded in the objective natural universe, which we all accept. So statements like “This action will cause an increase in seratonin in the subject’s brain” is grounded in the natural world.

That is the reason I asked him to define “grounding” – so we can work with his definition.

Certainly, for Neil to agree that something is grounded in the real world, he must agree that corresponds to the real world. That is why I said, ” For by your own definition, the grounding takes place by tying concepts to the real world, and not simply to other concepts, like Platonic ideals.”

Neil: as far as what you just said in comment 354 (wow btw , I disagree. Talking about “if a realm did exist” or “if a thing did exist” which nevertheless you think doesn’t, is pure speculation. If Sherlock Holmes really existed as a green monster the size of a planet, and lived on earth, then what would that imply for, say, copyright infringement? I’ve got no clue. I don’t think this is a very useful way to reason. At the very least, it has extremely limited usefulness and we must be careful. Certainly it is nowhere near a robust theory of morality, if we must be careful all the time to not misstep in our imaginary world that we are taking to be real for the sake of argument.

Now, the real question is, what is real and what is not? Do we know everything about this world? No. So we cannot possibly claim to be 100% right in all matters. Therefore, all this talk of “grounding” morality in something real actually consists of statements about personal beliefs. Take a look:

You say that you do not think the Muslim conception of the divine is real. Yet Muslims would say that they very much think it is real. There are close to a billion Muslims. In effect you are saying they are wrong. But this is beside the point. The real point I want to make is that your beliefs are relative to YOU, and therefore any pretenses of “objective” morality must include a disclaimer: “I *believe* this morality is grounded, but someone else might not”. Indeed, many don’t.

How is your grounding of morality any different from someone presupposing that John Rawls’ room of beings corresponds to reality, and that their decisions are what constitutes “objective morality” by definition? Certainly it is independent of human societies. Your only objection could be that you don’t believe John Rawls’ room exists, just like you don’t believe the Muslim claims. But if you then conclude that the morality isn’t really “objective” because you disagree, then you should likewise conclude that, to an atheist, your morality certainly isn’t objective, either. It is simply based in your religion.

Tom: is that comment to me? I was using Neil’s definition because he was the one I was having a discussion with at the time. What is your definition (sorry, this thread is quite long, so I don’t think I’ve caught it). What is wrong with his?

PS: this is what I mean by “whack a mole” … we need to work with one set of definitions at a time.

Tom (Re: Comment 355),

Yes, exactly! I wrote a long comment clarifying what I meant by “pramatism” but then thought better of it. I am not accusing lambda.calc of supporting a pragmatism like Rorty’s. But I am pushing the pragmatism up one level and asking “on what basis do you choose a belief-forming strategy? Is it based on some objective obligation? Or your personal goals?”

-Neil

Tom:

1) I did read comment 347. I didn’t realize it was meant to address the question,

When you, or lambda.calc for that matter, say that absolute duties exist, you (Neil) say they should be “grounded” in something. Fine, but can you please define what grounding means, I don’t get it.

I was looking for a response from Neil, and read your comment as simply a comment that added to the conversation by mentioning WLC, and his illustration of concepts related to objective morality. How is your definition different from Neil’s, and why should we use it instead of Neil’s?

2) Charlie was talking about whack-a-mole with atheists before, and I can appreciate that others feel that way. Please understand that I also feel there is a whack-a-mole as there are lots of different definitions and claims made by different people of different religions, or even within the same religion. We absolutely must work with one set of definitions at a time if we are to have an easy to follow conversation. Can we stick with Neil’s definition for the time being?

Neil:

I think you agree with me then, at least on the point that when we say that “objective” morality is “grounded”, what we really mean is that “we believe that a particular system of determining what is moral and what is not, independently of humans, corresponds to reality”. This is a statement about your beliefs, and not a statement about reality itself. There is a big difference.

1) How is this morality objective — that is, independent of human biases — if your own beliefs are a human bias?

2) What if later you change your beliefs and it substantially affects your supposedly “objective” moral system? How do you currently account for it in your definition of “grounding”?

3) You are going to have to outline how charitable you expect the atheist to be. As I quoted before, Steve Drake indicated that he didn’t think he had to be charitable, and so no reason for theists to be so. Personally I am inclined to start out with Steve Drake’s position and let you (Neil) tell me what you will and will not accept. Why? Because you are the person asking the question.

Let me give an example: When Melissa asks me a biblical question and I ask Melissa what she considers authoritative, the point is to know what argument she would find acceptable, and not simply dismiss as “irrelevant” or “doesn’t prove anything”. Melissa assured me that I shouldn’t worry about what she thinks is authoritative, but when I brought Biblical verses and their interpretations by the Jews themselves, she dismissed them as irrelevant to the question she asked. So I feel the need to point out I am not asking these questions frivolously. You set the rules of the game, since your question started the thread, and I need to know what they are, not guess at them.

Greg,
I’m going to quickly answer your quesitons and then I suggest we stop until lambda.calc gets back to us (unless you and tom want to keep talking).

1) How is this morality objective — that is, independent of human biases — if your own beliefs are a human bias?

I think there is a fundamental mistake her. The distinction is between moral ontology (do moral values exist?) and moral epistemology (how do we know what those values are?). These are two very different questions. I don’t think that anyone on this blog has at any point claimed to have a perfect knowledge of the content of moral values or obligations. We have merely maintained that such values and obligations do exist.

An anology would be quite helpful. I do not know all the laws of physics by any means. But I am certain that the laws of physics exist. If you asked “how can the laws of physics be objective if your own beliefs about them are always changing?”, we would all recognize that as a silly question. I may not know exactly what the laws are. But my uncertainty has little bearing on whethter such laws exist.

2) What if later you change your beliefs and it substantially affects your supposedly “objective” moral system? How do you currently account for it in your definition of “grounding”?

Again, see my answer to 1. The fact that I achieve a better and better understanding of the laws of physics never makes me question that the laws of physics (or the universe itself) exist. Even if the laws of phsics underwent a massive overhaul (as they have numerous times) at no point did physicists decide that their revised understanding proved that objective laws did not exist.

3) You are going to have to outline how charitable you expect the atheist to be.

I think we need to distinguish “philosophical charity” from “interpersonal charity.” I think that all philosophers need to be “philosophically charitable” in that we need to recognize -for instance- when an argument is valid, even if we don’t think it is sound. If we do not recognize this principle of “philosophical charity” then I wonder whether it is possible to enter into a discussion in the first place.

“Interpersonal charity” is a different matter. I think Christians are commanded by God to be gentle, respectful, and patient. In contrast, I do not think atheist would necessarily recognize any such obligation. I think it is wrong for atheists to be personally uncharitable; but I am not surprised if they are not because they see no value or obligation for them to act in such a way.

-Neil

Greg,
By your reasoning, the laws of physics are then also subjective. Right?
-Neil

Greg, I’m failing to see how the ability to convince someone else transforms your subjective beliefs into objective facts. I can convince people of all sorts of ideas using rhetoric and sophistry. People are routinely convinced of all kinds of false ideas. So the ability to convince other people doesn’t seem to provide any assurance that my beliefs are objectively true; it merely shows that I can convince other people of my subjective (and possibly false) beliefs.

Let me repeat your own question, but applied instead to “the laws of physics”, or “the existence of the objective universe”, or “the validity of evidence” or “the law of noncontradiction”. Do you really know these that these things are objectively true or is their truth just a subjective belief that you hold?

-Neil

Neil, that’s a weird thing to say. You ask me a question (e.g. about physics) and I respond, and then you accuse me of talking in circles! I think we are moving in a concrete direction.

I highly suggest that we wait for lambda.calc to respond, since I am very interested in his answers.

Are you saying you aren’t interested in mine, or that you feel our conversation will somehow prevent him from answering? He said he would.

I think I have already answered you about physical “laws” and theories. Let’s take it one step at a time. You say:

Similarly, I am asking the atheist to suggest a possible grounding for the value of ‘believing the truth.’ If they say that entity X grounds the value of ‘beleiving the truth’, I am not going to immediately deny that such an entity exists. I am first going to ask whether X could ground the truth if it did exist.

Okay. Although I don’t think that “if X were to exist” is a good way to figure things out about the world, let’s run with it for a second. Let me pick an alternative grounding system for “objective morality” almost at random. What if the atheist would say, “I believe that John Rawls’ construction, if it was real, would ground objective morality. For it is independent of human biases, and these rational beings are the paragons of rationality. We should all live consistently with their nature because they are rationality and goodness personified.” Wouldn’t that be a complete answer for you?

I have to leave for now, but I will be around later and try to address if you’ve written about stuff I was saying before, including this comment. If you would rather not discuss this with me and simply talk with lambda, let me know. Also, I haven’t addressed Tom’s definition yet.

Tom, your suggestion is an interesting one. I have several responses to it, but let me say just mention the first two and then let’s wait until lambda.calc … I will be back later tomorrow.

You point out that the relevant difference is that no one now or in history has ever thought Rawls’ room of beings exists, and therefore there is no reason to consider “what if it existed”.

1) This contradicts Neil’s approach as he laid it out, and this is what I mean by whack a mole. Have you offered any explanation as to why we shouldn’t consider Neil’s approach instead? (Which is what we have been doing.) Let’s finish dealing with Neil’s approach to grounding, and then switch to yours.

2) Normally I would consider the fact that no one believes something actually exists in reality to be significant. However, since the claim here is that the morality is “objective” – i.e. independent of anything any human actually thinks – we have to take that seriously. What humans think, even collectively, has no bearing upon whether this objective morality grounds moral obligation. You said something along these lines earlier, when we were talking about objective morality in Christianity.

Tom and I agree on grounding. See 361.
-Neil

Neil,

As to 335, those are some good questions.

Your first question is,

Are you certain that it is not possible to use separate truth-pursuing strategies to different areas of life?

I’m quite certain that there are multiple truth pursuing strategies that we invoke. The techniques that you use in the chemistry lab are distinct from what a mathematician would use. That said, there are methodologies that we can employ when discussing philosophy. They may be open to revision, but the ultimate standard of that is whether or not they succeed in the world; that is, that they track the truth.

Your second question is predicated on the mistaken construal of my position as being committed to the claim that there’s no objective obligation that we should believe the truth. That said, it does raise an interesting point about uncertainty, and imply something along the lines of Pascal’s wager. I think Pascal’s wager is unsound, since you first have to justify the partition of outcomes. This starts to take us away from the point at hand however, and I have no intention of discussing the merits of atheism against theism more broadly. I’m just sketching a view that an atheist can endorse about the nature of belief, and focussing on rebutting your initial argument.

I think I may have already addressed the third question, you charge me with a higher-order pragmatism. I think there is a fact of the matter as to which truth-pursuing processes will be more or less likely to succeed. That is, we should believe that certain processes will fare better than others. Do you dispute this? If so, on what grounds do you dispute this?

However, we have to remember that the question was: on atheism, is believing the truth good or obligatory? That is, we are assuing that atheism is actually true and then asking whether ‘believing the truth’ can be good or obligatory. It is perfectly true (and lambda.calc has agreed) that if God exists, then believing the truth about God is pragmatically important and good and obligatory. But our whole discussion thus far has started with the assumption that atheism is actually true and worked out the implications of that assumption. So the question of whether belief in God is prgamatic if God exists is a separate one.

I think pragmatic considerations about whether or not we should believe in God runs both ways. If we shouldn’t believe in God, I’d imagine that you and Tom would live different lives. For one, you wouldn’t be attempting to convince me that I need to believe in God were you to have the (hypothetically!) correct belief that we shouldn’t believe in God.

Suppose there are two possibilities, either God exists or he doesn’t (though I think the probability space is much larger!). If God exists and I believe that God exists, I satisfy the norm. If God doesn’t exist, and I believe that God exists, I fail to satisfy the norm. If God exists and I don’t believe that God exists, I then I fail to satisfy the norm. If God doesn’t exist, and I believe he doesn’t, I satisfy the norm.

What prevents me from chasing down all the various conceptions of God is a certain sort of pragmatism. This point isn’t terribly explicit, but I take it that at some point, we get to conceptions of God that are absolutely irrelevant to any reasons people might posit for believing in that conception of God.

The pragmatism that I’ve mentioned earlier is really more a point about our limitations. The realm of facts is far more proliferate than we can ever hope to have thoughts about. But there are some contingent facts that I’m presented with, which includes the fact that there are people who think there are sound arguments for belief in God. That raises the question to enough salience that I ought to be concerned about whether I’m mistaken, or they are.

Anyways, on to other posts!

Tom,

That’s not what lambda.calc was saying. He was not saying, consider X true if considering X true helps you meet your goals; he was saying (I think), In the case of pursuing the truth regarding God, do not fail to use the same kinds of truth-pursuing processes that would cause you great loss if you failed to apply them generally. There are a lot negatives in that, so to simplify it I’ll note that it’s logically similar to (has the same valences as), In the case of pursuing the truth regarding God, use the same kinds of truth-pursuing processes that would cause you good success if you applied them generally.

I think both are pretty much right. The only thing I’d abandon is the use of moral/normative terms on the nature of the success. We use processes which claim to track the truth in order to reason about the world. We believe that some of them succeed while other possible processes fail (lead us to believe things which are false). This is just the distinction between a sound argument and a fallacious argument.

There is debate about which processes will actually succeed, and that is what epistemologists and logicians work on. Since belief aims at the truth, we should believe that we ought to use those processes which track the truth. We have to figure out which ones actually do that, but that’s a question for which there’s whole journals devoted to figuring out.

Anyways, I hope I haven’t missed any substantive points. Do let me know if you feel that way.

lambda.calc

Thank-you for your patience in dealing with me, looking back over the thread I realised what part of the problem is and I wasn’t trying to be difficult.

At 311 you quoted me:

You said you agree that we should avoid holding false beliefs. You also stated earlier that we should believe instrumental truths.

Then you responded:

There is nothing inconsistent between believe truths which are important for our goals and saying that we should not believe falsehoods.

You reply doesn’t adequately convey what I meant. Which was an active avoidance of false belief. ie do we have an obligation to test our beliefs to see if they are false? I thought that by your reply in 247 that you understood my intended meaning, I didn’t realise there was a misunderstanding, sorry for wasting your time. I hope you don’t mind answering a few more queries.

Since belief aims at the truth, we should believe that we ought to use those processes which track the truth.

I know you believe that it is important to apply sound reasoning, I agree, but there are those who don’t and those that would have no idea what that might entail. Are they obligated to educate themselves? If arguments are detailed and if the effort required to investigate whether atheism is true is not commensurate with the benefits of holding that belief then what grounds the obligation to pursue whether atheism is true?

There are two things which determine, or ground the obligation, the way the world is (read: what’s true) and what cognitive role belief plays.

I don’t think this works because belief is not a isolated entity. You’re right that belief aims at truth but belief is also utilised by a living organism. In living organism all parts cooperate to further the ends of the organism. So while you can’t use your reasoning and belief processes to deliberately believe something is false there is no obligation to utilise those abilities to investigate claims that have no instrumental value.

I think concerning Rawls, people need to carefully read his Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry here, and more carefully assess what Rawls was trying to do. I’ve been meaning to read “A Theory of Justice” if I ever find the time, but I’m sure you all know how reading lists pile up. The SEP article should be a decent primer. Greg is simplifying things, but it’s really quite a careful theory.

Neil,

In your response #385, your answers to my three questions all reduce to “we are obligated to pursue the truth.” For instance, the woman on her deathbed should revise her beliefs because we are obligated to pursue the truth. The atheist should not use selective evidence, because we are obligated to pursue the truth. And I should not take the afterlife pill because I am obligated to pusue the truth. Now if we are obligated to pursue the truth, then I agree that these three answers are obvious (let’s set aside the question of how we know which truth-pursuing strategy actually does track truth).

The reduction doesn’t follow.

We’re obligated to believe the truth, so if it’s true that there’s no afterlife, we should believe that there’s no afterlife. And if it’s true that there is, we should believe that there is. I’m not sure how you get to an obligation to pursue the truth from that.

When you write:

But the essential question is still: what grounds our obligation to pursue the truth?

I think you’ve equivocated. You agree with me that whether or not we are obligated to pursue the truth is distinct question from whether or not we ought to believe truths. Recall that this thread started with a claim you made in the previous one, that there doesn’t seem to be any reason for the atheist not to preface their debate:

There is nothing good or obligatory about ‘believing the truth.’ If the truth that I am going to defend tonight works for you, then you should accept it. But if it doesn’t work for you, if you don’t like it, or it doesn’t meet your needs, or it doesn’t help you attain your goals, then you can feel free to ignore it. There is nothing good about believing something, simply because it is true. In fact, if you don’t like it for any reason, you should just reject it.

I’ve been replying to this point. The question of whether or not we should pursue all truths, some truths, or no truths is a different matter. Just as the question of which truths we should pursue. I find myself pursuing truths regardless, if only to facilitate my action in the world. But I’m committed to the basic fact that I should believe what is true.

Since we have an obligation to believe the truth, we shouldn’t adopt any strategies which are non-truth tracking and over-ride truth tracking ones. Since they are more likely to lead us to falsehood.

Could you explain what you mean here? How does the way the world is (i.e. what’s true) obligate us to pursue this truth? And how does the cognitive role of belief obligate us to pursue the truth?

You’ve missed the point of what I was writing. The way the world is determines what is true. The cognitive role of belief obligates grounds the norm “we should believe the truth”.

Could you address this crucial question in more detail: on atheism, what grounds our obligation to pursue truth?

Do you mean, pursue the truth simpliciter? I don’t think there is, otherwise we get into the situations where we are obligated to memorize logarithm tables

Or do you mean to try to figure out whether or not there is any sound reason to believe in the claims made by Christian philosophers with respect to theism?

Melissa,

I know you believe that it is important to apply sound reasoning, I agree, but there are those who don’t and those that would have no idea what that might entail. Are they obligated to educate themselves? If arguments are detailed and if the effort required to investigate whether atheism is true is not commensurate with the benefits of holding that belief then what grounds the obligation to pursue whether atheism is true?

As to the first question, yes, under pain of endorsing a strategy that would lead them to believe falsehood. The second question turns on the nature of atheism, which is kind of nebuluous. I’m not entirely sure I want to get into a terminological debate, but briefly, I think atheism is the stance that there are good reasons to not believe in any sort of God that people propose.

The default is not even having an attitude on the question, since it wouldn’t come up without folks believing that there are sound arguments on the question. But people do, so under pain of endorsing unsound reasoning we either have to revise our beliefs, or engage with the reasons that theists present.

Evaluating these matters may be complex, but thankfully, we do this collaboratively. It’s why we have scholars, the epistemic burden gets split. A lot of our beliefs come from testimony, and they’re still good beliefs, since we regulate and believe that others are following sound practices.

This is a big issue though.

As to your other worries, does the general strategy I have in response to Neil work? There is no reason to pursue the truth, de dicto, since that gets us into an obligation to memorize logarithm tables. But there are contingent reasons as to why one might be concerned about any particular truth?

I believe lambda.calc is saying the same thing as I have been saying. In my parlance it would be like this:

“If you (as a biological organism) want your actual beliefs to be consistent with the cognitive role that belief plays in the definition of the word ‘belief’, then you are obligated to believe true things.”

lambda.calc, is this an accurate restatement of what you are saying, in terms of wanting things?

It is conceivable that someone doesn’t want their actual thoughts or attitudes to be consistent with the accepted definition of belief. Perhaps they want the definition of belief to be whatever the Queen says in Alice in Wonderland

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!”

Maybe they want to take drugs and believe fairies really exist. In that case I don’t think they are obligated to believe. But if they want to match the definition of belief that we have been using in this discussion, and everyone seems to accept, then yes, they are obligated. Otherwise, they have no business claiming that they “believe X” when they really don’t. Because we won’t accept their claim!