Morals

When debating atheists about the existence of God, the conversation invariably reduces to a choice in which line of reasoning to follow: that a God unbound by the limits of time and space created the universe, and that said God was somehow self-generated; or that the universe itself was somehow self-generated. Occam's Razor would have me follow the latter line of reasoning, which makes sense but seems to me like a cop-out.

Occam's Razor suggests that when faced with two or more answers to a question, one should choose the answer with the fewest assumptions. However, Occam's Razor is used in lieu of any evidence that might be found to verify a conclusion; it's for when you have nothing better to work with in pursuit of the truth. For instance, if the razor were applied when asking why I wrote this post, you wouldn't likely assume that I'm doing it at gunpoint for the amusement of my captor, but that could be exactly what's happening nonetheless. Occam's Razor doesn't change or necessarily aid in the pursuit of, the truth.

Moving on, it seems to me that the discovery of an absolute moral truth or lack thereof would resolve the issue stated previously. Morality applies only to conscious beings, so if there is a true "right" and "wrong" beyond the imaginings of mankind it would mean that some conscious being made it so. Anything with this kind of power can be justifiably called "God" or at least "a god" based on our understanding of the concept. If this absolute moral truth is fully consistent with all other universal constants, it would stand to reason that all universal laws, including moral laws, were created by the same force or god. Which would mean that an eternal god created the universe and wants all behaviorally-conscious beings to act a certain way.

So my question is: is there an absolute moral truth?

No, only dubs.

Athiest here, my logic is that there is no need for a god whatsoever. Science created the universe, and ethics should dictate how we act to each other, not a 2000 year old book. So from that, I believe there is a 99% chance there is no god whatsoever.

Philosophy fag here.

Here are multiple answers


*Nietzche: No, different societies construct different morals in response to what values will help them improve at the moment. Different societies have different needs and reality is always changing so morals always change

*Stirner: Morality is a way of tricking people into serving you. If your position has the moral highground they will go with it. This only works if you beleive morals have any weight.

*Hume: You cannot get an "Is" from an Ought

*1,000 years of Christian "philosophy": If we axiomatically assume our religion is true and all others are false than yes, there is absolute morality. It's what God says, because we have also axiomatically decided God is a synonmon for moral goodness.

*Plato: Yes, but I can't prove it. Absolute truth in all things comes from the Forms, which I also cannot prove.

*(various failed attempts at morality) Yes, I am going to axiomatically assume this certain thing is what is moral (eg minimizing pain), here is how to accomplish it.

Sikh here, my belief is that god said one word and he willed for the creation of universe. However, my religion states that the question of creation is not important since it will not get us closer to our salvation. However in terms of morals, Sikhism states that every person is acting in the will of god. Kind of belief in predeterminism but I could be wrong.

>Science created the universe

Science is a method invented by humans for discovering what's real and verifying/falsifying predictions. It didn't create the universe, it explains the universe. Furthermore, if science created the universe, then what created science?

>ethics should dictate how we act to each other, not a 2000 year old book

First of all, the Abrahamic religions are not the only ones touting moral truths. Second, you would know absolutely nothing if you didn't rely on knowledge from the past. Third, would you prefer a book written today? What the fuck does it matter when it was written?

>So from that, I believe there is a 99% chance there is no god whatsoever

>So from absolute spoon-fed bullshit I believe ---

Yeah, fuck off.

Well, I can't say I'm very convinced by any of these. I'm looking for strong arguments, not really single statements by themselves.

>it seems to me that the discovery of an absolute moral truth or lack thereof would resolve the issue stated previously

This part of my post disagrees with this part of your post:

>the question of creation is not important since it will not get us closer to our salvation

Care to defend your religion's position or attack mine?

What do you mean?

Than you need to read their books.
Nietzche: Genology of Morality
Stirner: Ego and his own
Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Plato: Start with Phaedo

I'll also add that in the current state of philosophy unless you want to invoke God the subjective nature of morality is almost universally agreed on. Absolute truths are a huge bitch to pull off in philosophy except in areas like epistemology and logic.

And IMO Plato is the only one with a decent argument. Most theological reasoning is based on him or Aristotle who provides another method.

Aristotle: There is an absolute moral truth. All things have a built in function or "telos". That which is closest to their telos is good and that which is removed is bad.

I would reason that an absolute morality does not exist.

Simply put, all civilizations and cultures are raised differently because their origins and circumstance pit them in situations unique to them.

Generally, though, not one culture (as far as I know) is tolerant of murder and thievery.
Whether or not this is "morality" or simply instinctual is debatable.

Perhaps morality is closely related to our instincts? It certainly is arguable.

Morality does vary.
Some cultures vary more-so than others.
But it does seem like there is a certain shared morality between 'sane' humans.

Thank you. These should be good reads.

Was kinda hoping you'd defend a position but this should help.

>or that the universe itself was somehow self-generated

why is that a simpler explanation?

when God is brought up, they call it magic thinking. Surely a universe which is self generated has been given the attributes of a God and is a miracle?

Furthermore, the universe is causal in nature and cannot be contingent in itself.

God is known as the non contingent ground of all being.

I could elaborate on the concept of will. It is called Hukum and the entire universe is subject to the Hukam of the Creator God.Nothing ever happens without the Will of Him. Hukum itself means connecting with the will of god and attaining salvation.

Oh Gorgias is also a good Plato one. Socrates debates a Sophist (Sophists basically thought everything was subjective because language is subjective). The Sophist argues that morality is just decided by whoever has the biggest stick or the most eloquent argument, Socrates defends that there is an absolute truth.

Phaedo is more about trying to prove that the Forms must exist. If the Forms exist than absolute truth does exist. A lot religious theology basically equates God to the Forms.

God is regularly associated with infinity, infinity in logic and maths breaks down, when logic is inherently broken arguing from such a position is invariably difficult, arguing from a difficult position means it requires additional intelligence especially when your opponents are regularly intelligent.

Therefore it's easier to argue as an atheist than a theist.

Give me until about early next year and I'll spark theism.

Just for God's sake don't come back at me with "aww that's just pragmatism." Accept what in doing, accept why I'm doing it and accept I believe what I'm preaching


>So my question is: is there an absolute moral truth?
No.

Reality itself has a level of competition which means there's no real one solution or one bulletproof strategy (to life). That being said, many if not most virtues have certain advantages to the individual as well as to those surrounding them, as in enlightened self-interest. Even something like chastity can increase the enjoyment of sex, or temperance can allow you to be happier with less, or patience is essentially the grand strategy master's virtue.

I, of course, intend for a better breed of theists for the future, not to say many intelligent Christians aren't impressive enough, just not good enough to give atheists a reason to believe.

Yes

Nice strawman

nobody who carries a faith in the eternal divine in any mature manner considers anything like being "self-generated" in any way.

The Deity is Eternally existing.. without beginning or end..

unitl you can conceive of this you are only thinking in humanistic terms which fail utterly to begin any actual contemplation of the reality of God.

I believe that we live in a simulated reality. Morals are basically programmer code for "you shouldn't do that".

The creator of our reality is not perfect. Just like any simulation, it takes on a life of its own, and not even the creator can predict what will happen. So we can assume the creator had an intention in mind, but something went wrong, or the creator is watching what unfolds.

>Science created the universe
Along with a wide range of laws that govern the interaction of matter in such a way that eventually tended to the creation of two beings, out of nothing but laws and matter, which formed opinions about this process and have the intelligence to discuss the process? In effect the universe is discussing itself about itself, seems a little miraculous?

Stirner is a fag and Nietzsche gets too much hate. Can you also talk about Heidegger? If you can, I'd prefer (but obviously can't force you) to focus on philosophers between 1750 and 2000, although Plato is boss.

That method exists in the minds of humans, in fact without getting existentialist, what doesn't?

SM? Anyway after a certain video I kind of prefer Aristotle, I see logic in him and am currently studying polytheism which I've found is almost entirely about identity and how you react to the stimuli the universe throws at you, or to compare with Aristotle, an individual's "function." Although, polytheism influences personality in a way entirely antithetical to a genuine "telos," you're cease to be "you" and become whatever mask you've chosen along with the virtues associated with that mask.

BTW if sm thanks for the BSG reference.

This proves that cultures can have moral imperatives, but not necessarily anything written into natural law about morality.

As in, God as a form of idealism?

No man. All medevil ethics philosophy makes some assumptions about Christianity being axiomatically true.

Try this. Give me an argument for Christian ethics that
1) Does not assume the religion is true
2) Argues it is objectively correct

You'd have to drop either point 1 or 2 to really be able to put up a decent fight.


Sounds pretty Gnostic. They thought the current plane of existence was made by an imperfect God who filled it with bad things: in some versions he did it to be a dickhead in others he's just a guy who is doing the best he can.

All the good "absolute" stuff is in higher planes of existence which you can access in a limited way. You can also sort of transfer your mind/data to the "real" "higher" planes if you develop enough.

Because arguments for the truth of Christianity and ethical arguments from a Christian point of view are two different subjects.

Do you expect everyone who comments on things from a Christian point of view go through why Christianity is true every single time? No.

The spartans praised those who were good thieves by not whipping them.
As in training their young boys to steal food.
But I would argue that thievery is not really, "immoral" in a general sense. Just,
>Don't fucking steal my stuff. Yo guys, let's fucking kill this dude before he steals your stuff.
Murder is more interesting though

Define Ethics, and what time period do you want?

>Heidegger
I know almost nothing about him

>polytheism
Polytheism tends to become more amoral and polytheism more towards absolute morality. The more Gods fight each other or try to 1-up each other the more amoral things get.

If there is only one God calling the shots there's only one morality. With multiple Gods all doing their own things each has their own morality and they can butt-heads. Sometimes one God can be so strong he the others all have to obey him and there's one morality.

Generally in order to keep things in check some sort of non-God divine force is the real big boss. So while all the Gods are fighting there's a cosmic energy that runs the whole show and even is required to sustain the Gods. For example in the Aztec religion Sun-power is the real head cheese. The Gods themself make sacrifices to it. Personally I think Sun-power is a metaphor for the life/death cycle. Even Gods can't escape it!

In Monotheism, the God himself fufills the "force" of reality, like the Holy Spirit.

So if you like telos you can still apply to polytheism as long as whatever force makes the Telos makes order out of the Gods. So the reason the war God is angry is because the Telos has decree'd he makes war. It's moral for him to be angry. It's immoral for the Peace Goddess to be angry because it's against her Telos.

In monotheism God is usually the one that made the Telos and he is beyond it's power.

>Idealism
Forms can either be divine or idealism depending how you read them. My favorite reading is Jung who thinks they are subconscious behavior common to us all.

An imperfect God can make sense if you view evolution firstly as God's mechanism for creation and secondly as a form of heuristic, most generative algorithms actually requires imperfection in order to slowly approach a solution, or rather the best current solution. Basically, God is a programmer, a lazy one too.

If you were to believe that, objective morality breaks down because there's no assurance that one set of morality is assured to be superior over another. In some ways I'm thinking of the "selfish gene," but I also know selfish people are generally quite repulsive making it not as much of a winner's trait as Dawkins would assume.

One could conclude that God itself did not know what exactly it was creating, just that it would be capable of wicked awesome philosophical discussion.

It's very easy for atheists to assume their opponent is dogmatic, I remember one argument with one atheist who wished to impose all these omnigod strawmen and then ended with "you're not a real theist." I also remember a set of barely philosophy related videos that did the same.

I'll study Heidegger in my own time. I'm trying to unravel the origins of modern philosophy, including the roots of postmodernism (which I feel is a reaction to modernism). Before I'm confident enough to create media or even post about it on pol, I require additional information.

>tends .. amoral
In some ways, yet I don't find Indian society particularly amoral. Polytheism, perhaps, tends to more subjective morality. As you said, those who follow the war god are going to act differently to the peace god.

>Sun-power is the real head cheese
Which IMO eventually points to a monotheistic base, kind of like monotheism for one class (almost always the priestly class) and polytheism for everyone else. I do hate to bring class warfare/subjugation in the mix, but in many ways polytheism seems to be an especial means of controlling the people.

You tell the soldiers to worship Ares

Religious philosophy is a bitch. I'm not Christian so I can't really entertain an argument that axiomatically has it true. I think most people care little for Christian philosophy if they do not believe in the religion. Anything that requires the religion being true as an axiom is easy to dismiss.

That's also why religious debates tend to suck unless everyone involved is the same religion and it just boils down to trying to figure out who's faith is correct.

Just give me some code of conduct that can be demonstrated to be objectively good or bad without needing to take Christianity's truth as an axiom.As an example let's say the topic is when killing is good or bad. But you can pick any subject you want.

>You can also sort of transfer your mind/data to the "real" "higher" planes if you develop enough.

Is that something that is often agreed upon, when talking about living in a simulated reality? It's a fascinating idea: that one could somehow understand their universe well enough that they could in a way "break its code".

>An imperfect God can make sense if you view evolution firstly as God's mechanism for creation and secondly as a form of heuristic, most generative algorithms actually requires imperfection in order to slowly approach a solution, or rather the best current solution.

This is also pretty Gnostic. Gnostism has multiple planes of existence. We are on the absolute shittiest, increasingly better Gods are on higher planes but you need to spirtually evolve and get to them when you die. The top plane has the perfect God.

The reason you can't just skip to the top plane is because your flaws would prevent you from surviving in his enviroment. For example there is less material matter the farther up you go and more and more it's basically pure thought floating in nothingness. By the time you get to the top there's no matter at all!


>but in many ways polytheism seems to be an especial means of controlling the people.

That's strange. I think polytheism is awesome and monotheism is about control. Monotheism tends to work well when you have an empire. One God, one ruler. Also in polytheism you can appeal directly to the divine force and have a spiritual reality outside of the God's whims. Since the force is impersonal there's much freedom, alternitvily you can go to a God that is designed specifically for your class role. My personal choice is to only invest in the "forces" of which I think there are several.

>I'm trying to unravel the origins of modern philosophy
My personal view is that Plato was the king of philosophy until Nietzsche showed up and took the thrown.

My view is that originally the realm of divinity and the realm of man were one and the line between man and God were blurred. Plato split the world in two separating them. Earth received light from the divine realm above. Nietzsche reunited the two worlds but people are still looking in the sky for the kingdom.

>The Kingdom of Heaven Is Spread Upon The Earth But Men Do Not See It

God is sovereign, why should a resolve god to a thing that I can meditate upon, when it is a being that is?

Humans are provided sight, sound, touch, taste, along with the faculties of perception, such as number, shape, order, and time.

The world by design, is designed to be human. That is to be seen through the scope of our very powers to make sense out of it. We standardized out weights, drawn out our calendars, found inequalities, and scrutinized the terms of what it means to be accurate and true. Beside these things we are benefited as observable, there are things which are not. Things which are as the sights and sounds, to things which are of the mind. Perfect lines, and circles may not truly exist in nature, but certainly do in our thoughts, as definitions. From the markings on a sextant or ruler, to the perpendicular lines of a compass. The fuzziness of measurement is something that suites us more so in a practical means than an absolute aspect of knowledge within the mind (which bear in mind too, is more free to assert form as it pleases).

Chaos doesn't entail nothingness, for nothingness is the lack of chaos (or the thing being inquired to be present). This statement is something the mind does.
Chaos is formlessness, things without form. Before we are born, there wasn't nothing, because there is certainly something from which this idea of ourselves comes from. This thing is not god, but is of god.

Let's say string theory us correct. The tenth dimension is the definition of the traditional "god."

At worst, you have a god of probabilities with enough sentience to eliminate paradoxes, and at best, the same, except the paradoxes are eliminated benevolently.

If the former, then no. If the latter, then yes.

Would you consider yourself Bro tier?

By that logic, the evil doing of some people is the will of god? Some god you worship.

>So my question is: is there an absolute moral truth?

No.

There's just someone laying out a moral code and then enforcing it. Where the force comes from doesn't really matter - it doesn't even matter if the force isn't real as long as the people following that moral code believe that it is, like with Christianity.

That's why we don't really need it. Force can be real and the moral code we can create can be superior to that of religion.

>Occam's Razor suggests that when faced with two or more answers to a question, one should choose the answer with the fewest assumptions.

Oh look the shaved ape doesnt have a clue what he is talking about