Ye-es.

Sometimes I wonder whether we couldn't go direct to ethics without going via supernatural fables?

Dear Jardine,

«Sometimes I wonder whether we couldn't go direct to ethics without going via supernatural fables?»

Perhaps because there ARE no ethics in the natural?

Nature is a cruel place and anyone who truly believes that they come from nature, is indeed dangerous.

The bible is anything but perfect, but occasionally it can distance individuals from their beast.

Funny, I follow a lot of the major anti-theist groups on Facebook and I didn’t notice anything different.

<<Social media last week was peppered with comments such as 'why care about that old book?', 'it's all fairytales' or, more constructively, 'the Bible's teachings are evil'.>>

This describes a standard week on Facebook’s News Feed for me.

<<Sometimes these opinions are offered by people who quite clearly have never set eyes on chapter and verse …>>

No, not in my experience. In my experience, they are the words of people who have actually read the book (and I mean beyond the four Gospels), rather than simply sitting there in the pews swallowing everything the pastor dishes out in his increasingly vague and motivational sermons as his faith slowly slips away with his credulity.

<<I would argue for the value of some biblical input in most public discourse.>>

Great. Then present a rational argument in favour of that. Because, given that one needs to wade through the Bible's many contradictions and cherry-pick it to pieces, the Bible appears to be an unnecessary step that can be skipped altogether.

<<But this is not a new idea.>>

No, it most certainly is not. I mean, it took a country founded on freedom 245 years to figure out that slavery is wrong because the Bible says it’s right. (Exodus 21:2-27, Ephesians 6:5, Colossians 3:22, 1 Peter 2:18, Matthew 5:17)

<<The Bible has almost always been an instrument for free speech. Where the Bible has been freely available, a society has usually become more tolerant …>>

This is the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc)

<<What is the moral basis of marriage?>>

Whatever societies deem it to be. Marriage is, after all, a social construct.

<<What is sex for?>>

Procreation, bonding, and enjoyment. There is no need for mythology to figure that out.

However, I agree with the author in as much as I would encourage more Bible literacy, because there’s nothing that will make you an atheist quicker than actually reading that damn book.

All the examples of the Bibles' influence mentioned in this Article are of a historical nature.

These are from an age when mankind had to believe in 'something' greater that itself... actively encouraged and led by Churches who had something to gain from this leadership... a Living !

You can still see what this overall Christian domination on its 'faithful' was like by looking at the Islamic World today.

They are yet to have their Reformation.

We all outgrow our childhood fairy stories even if we do remember lines from some of them over the years.

This also describes the Bible and it's rusted on believers.

Yep and secularist have replaced belief in God with ' reason' . It allows us to kill the unborn with no conscience, perform every sexual perversion in the name of diversity (totally denying biology) and deny scientific laws to the max in swallowing the evolution fantasy. Pseudo science is simply an excuse for denying reason (hence man made gw fantasy) and makes us dumb enough to think we are not accountable to our Creator. I'm not sure if God is crying over our ignorance or laughing at the secularist stupidity. Yep the bible is still the Word of God. What secularist hate is it describes human nature accurately and thankfully through Christ offers forgiveness and rationality.

But the Bible has also been used to justify a never-ending series of horrors.
Such was the inevitable consequence(s) when the widely based amorphous early christian movement was coopted by the Roman State placing Constantine's famous Sword at the blood-soaked leading edge of christian expansionism. Which necessarily involved the elimination/execution of "heretics" and anyone who attempted to stand in the way of this power-and-control seeking imperative.

An essay by Sarah Posner titled Amazing Disgrace describes the dark political purposes of the right-wing supposedly Biblical literature denizens in the USA - the inheritors of Constantine's power-and-control seeking imperative.

And of course the Murdoch media, and the Australian "news"-paper where this essay was first published are the now-time leading edge boosters of the applied blood-soaked politics of Constantine's Sword.
As is the producer of this disgusting vile movie:
http://torchbearermovie.com

There are of course now more Bibles in existence than ever before, and more christians too, both in total numbers and as a percentage of the total human population.
And does being Biblically literate really help or enable anyone to live with Real deeply-considered Intelligence in this time and place?

I think we have to see the Bible as part of the literature that shaped our society and formed our societal values. It is part of our cultural history whether we like it or not. It is not possible to understand the formation of Western civilization without a knowledge of the Bible. It is certainly not possible to understand the history of art without a familiarity with its stories. This has nothing to do with believing - it is just a part of our heritage with which we should be acquainted.

we're in one of those weird eras where non-christians obviously don't want a bible or christian based laws, but christians need the bible and government by laity/ clergy.

2017, and we're still finding it difficult to separate the myths and miracles of the old books from their underlying - and often unintended - ethical foundations.

Of course, when these books were put together, the 'lessons' had to be gilded with miracles and wonders. It's no coincidence that the withering away of Christian dogma occurred as western science gained strength, through sheer hard work, the accumulation of evidence, the sharing of ideas and room for the proposal of ever-new theories.

All religious books, the bible, the Koran, the Hindu books etc., had the misfortune to have been written and set in stone before people knew bugger-all about the world, the universe and everything. But if we set burning bushes and crows feeding blokes in the desert and virgin births aside, and focus on their human bases, their ethical bases, we can all learn something.

[Although, as a child, I knew that it's so much easier to go on and on and on about (a) the idiocy of believing in miracles, and (b) how evil believers have been towards non-believers.]

Put that aside: what were the human values of different religions (if they have any: Islam, I'm not so sure about, except for its parochial and tribalist prejudices), that we can all learn from, including us atheists ?

Is it, or is it not, worthy and honorable to help our fellow man, regardless if whether or not he is 'one of us' ? [i.e. the Good Samaritan Story, which may or may not be true but that really doesn't matter]. Are all people basically entitled to the dame respect, the same rights and the same - to use a sooky Christian word - love ? I think so.

Conversely, should everybody be protected from evil done by others ? i.e., random murder (gosh, who am I getting at ?), starvation, stunted lives, total lack of opportunity (including that of women)? I think so.

Yes, we can build on those pre-modern systems of ethical behaviour and hopefully move far beyond them, but we shouldn't forget where they are derived from.

Joe

Yuyutsu

"Perhaps because there ARE no ethics in the natural?"

Perhaps there aren't, and perhaps there are. But whether there are, should at least be investigated with an open and inquiring mind, before we conclude that there aren't.

If we say that no rational ethics is possible, then I don't see how we can be in any better position for recourse to theism: magical superbeings and all that.

However I believe a rational ethics is possible, and follows from
a) the fact of natural scarcity,
b) the fact that an ethic is a rule of just conduct.

The fact of natural scarcity means that there is always the possibility of conflict between human beings over the use of resources. So if this is not to be resolved by mere brute force, and aggression, and the stronger taking from the weaker - then we need rules of just conduct: we need ethics.

This must be so, because even in a Garden of Eden, there would still be the radical scarcity of the stuff of one's physical body, and one's standing room. So there would still be a need for ethics even in Paradise.

How about that for a first step?

Hi Joe Loudmouth

Yes, very interesting post.

I used to think, I reject the Christian view of the origin of the universe, the world, the origin of species, and the origin of languages; but I do believe in the Christian ethic.

But then later on, I thought, hang on: if the factual basis of the ethic is wrong, or so highly likely to be wrong that it's unreasonable to believe otherwise, then the ethic is likely to prove wrong too.

Christianity seems one of the most sex-negative belief systems in the world. Trying to find its source, I started at the book of Genesis. First up, we have, God made everything and behold it was very good. Next up, Adam and Eve become aware of their nakedness and are "ashamed". So all of a sudden, without any explanation, behold it was very bad. From then on, virtually every mention of sex is disapproving: it is sinful, repugnant, obscene, and so on. The Christian view is basically that all sex but married monogamous heterosexuality is a distortion of human sexuality. However, as Kinsey showed, if we look at the 'fieldwork' of human sexuality as it were - if we look at the actual facts - the truth is the opposite. Human sexuality is a very varied landscape. The commonest form of heterosexuality is a series of nearly-monogamous relationships, with 'a bit on the side'. Only a small minority of even the Christian population ever complies with the Christian precepts of marriage as virgins and life-long monogamous fidelity thereafter.

So why should we adopt the Christian ethic in hating and condemning ordinary non-offensive human sexual behaviour?

Therefore why should we adopt the Christian ethic when it's factually wrong?

However, if we are not to have a theistic ethic, then we need a rational ethic, otherwise what is to stop the original ethical problem, that the stronger and more aggressive will simply grab what they want from the weaker?

How about that?

Hi JDJ,

No, I didn't say it was a perfect fit. But I don't believe that the underlying ethic (of probably any religion)is tied totally to its religious-mirabilist-crap exterior. The notion of 'doing to others as you would have them do unto you' is surely a worthy start ? Or, as Martin Buber put it, 'Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.' Surely that's not just a worthy principle, but a possibly secular one as well ?

And of course, those ethical principles have evolved a long way from Hammurabi's 'eye for an eye, etc.' of four thousand years ago. After all, the Good Samaritan principle (more honoured in its breach even now) was probably impossible in tribal societies like those of the ancient Hebrew tribes. A liberal dash of Greek philosophy and Roman practicality added to the evolving Jewish ethic was probably necessary, the notion that 'the other' wasn't that different, and therefore - a huge leap - had as many rights as anybody else.

Those principles of reciprocity and universality have thankfully carried down to many of us, even some of us atheists. But inevitably, their origins, their first battlegrounds, were in the evolving ethics of Judaism and Christianity. I have no problem with acknowledging that.

Cheers,

Joe

Interesting comments about the 'Bible'.

No Bible scholars here though. Not one Bible historian writes here, and it is, a historical book.

No-one here seems to know, how we arrived at the collection of manuscripts, now known as the Bible, and all the manuscripts, left out, of those chosen to be 'Bible material', and why.

The Abrahamic religions, all have, very nearly, the same Bible as their fundamental book. These three religions, have been single-handedly responsible, for so much death and torture. All of this set in God's name, of course, as we see with Jihadists.

What folk, of course, don't realize, is that though language can stay the same, as is carefully kept the same, the meanings actually change, sometimes rapidly. No linguists here, of course.

You are looking for guidance, and meaning in places, that are simply echoing, your lostness.

But then, who am I to offer anything, this is up to you, alone.

fool on the hill,

Your post was one big Courtier’s Reply fallacy - a form of ad hominem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtier's_Reply). None of us need to be Biblical scholars, historians, or linguists to know that the Bible fails as both a moral guide and an historical record.

The Bible, particularly the book of Genesis, fails on both a scientific and historical level. Science debunks the story of Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, and the exodus.

As for morality, one need only be a human whose mind has not been poisoned by religion to understand that slavery, genocide, sycophantism, the rewarding of belief over deeds, and scapegoating (the idea that people can throw their bad deeds on to someone else and have them die and take your “sin” with them) are immoral.

The above are self-evidently immoral. We don’t require experts to tell us that, and anything that could qualify as a god should be an effective-enough communicator to write an instruction book for us that didn’t require experts to interpret it.

How hard could it be to say, "Slavery is wrong"?

The well known German philosopher and atheist Jürgen Habermas - quoted in the article from his Time of Transition (Polity Press 2006) - provides in the Part VIII (called “Jerusalem, Athens, Rome”), of that book, a very good reading for atheists (and others) interested in a scholarly serious evaluation of the Bible’s input into the cultural formation of the Judeo-Hellenic-Christian West (as he calls it).

The Gnostic gospels and Dead Sea Scrolls show that the Bible was a heavily edited text that left much of the writings of the period on the cutting room floor. The final Bible product rejected egalitarian concepts in favour of promoting the agenda of the early Christian patriarchs – with dashes here and there of philosophical wisdom to maintain its profundity credentials.

It has always been the tragedy of Western civilisation that the Roman Empire and later Holy Christian Empire forced Old Europe to submit to a sacred script that was totally at odds with its own history and environment. The monotheistic, hegemonic, desert-based Abrahamic religions were at odds with the temperate-climate, pantheistic, polytheistic, egalitarian religions of Old Europe.

But the new world order of the time needed a monotheistic biblical base to cement its right to rule. The Holy Christian Empire waged an all-out war on Paganism that raged for a thousand years, the effects of which we are still feeling today.

The Bible is basically a 2000-year old book of rules for forcing an Abrahamic, patriarchal, hegemonic order on European societies that have continually railed against it.

Killarney,

Agreed, the Christian Church and its 'Holy Book' closed the Western mind for nearly a thousand years. The ancient Greeks demonstrated that we don't need a sacred text dictated by a sky fairy to establish a system of ethics. The fact, Ignored by most believers, is that Bible has been continually reinterpreted in the light of contemporary ethics. It's irrelevant.

I agree with AJ.

The bible is a horror story of murder, manipulation, lying, genocide, and evil. There is no "morality" in the bible. It is all "bow down and lick my boots or ill torture you. Forever". So much for the "god of love" More like the god of "love me".
How insecure and vain is this god thing? To want all these toadies constantly "worshiping" it?
Strange behavior from the supposedly most powerful being ever.

Your morals dont come from this most immoral of books.
They come from many years of human experience that have taught us that life is better than death, health is better than sickness, comfort is preferable to pain. That treating others with respect gets respect in turn and generally leads to harmony and peace. A preferable state to conflict and violence. For all of us.

Nothing to do with your stupid book. Just because we occasionally reference nazi culture (jackboots, concentration camps, hitler references in general) does that mean they were an important "mainstay of western life"? Bollocks it does.

You godbotherers need to learn you can believe any freaky crap you want just dont try to push it onto the rest of us and keep it the hell away from our schools, science and government.

Quoting chapter and verse from a contested belief system or from the writing of students of the book; who have long since passed into history proves nothing, save the unfounded convictions of the believer!

That said some of the quotations have the ring of truth and justice in them. i.e., do unto others as you would be done unto.

Inasmuch as you do unto the least among you, you also do unto me.

And who with even just a scaric of human decency or empathy is going to argue against the good Samaritan parable.

That said, many of the claims pertaining to the Christian Master, have been rewritten and revised completely out of context unless supported by an unmistakable parable that prevented it.i.e., to reach unto the kingdom of heaven ye must be born again!

According to legend, this was a plain speaking man, who knew the overwhelming bulk of his audience was illiterate, and rather than speaking in riddles, needing various and abundant interpretation, he not only said what he meant, (verily verily I say unto you) but at times supported unmistakable teaching with analogy or parable!

Moreover, committed to print some 350 years after the event? With not as much as a single eyewitness account?

Even so, nowhere has this master advocated for celibacy or against gender bias, given we are born who and what we are and determined by our respective DNA! Which was created by the hand of God, allegedly.
Alan B.

Reading the blather above (with the rare exception of runner), made me laugh.
Here I was believing the Great War was actually nothing at all related to religion, ( and neither was WWII).

And how inept and backward thinking of me to believe it was actually scientific invention which was responsible for its catastrophic impact on the civilisation of man, and it's huge losses of human life at the end of a gun barrel !

That's 10 minutes I will never see again.

The bible is no more a mainstay of western life than any other history books written by fallible authors. It should be treated with caution until its propositions can be proven by test.

"Western" culture has grown out of an era of ignorance and superstition which allowed men and organisations, ambitious for power and wealth, to dominate uneducated individuals, much in the style of present day cultist fashions.
It alarms me to see fellow humans calling upon imaginary beings, or fictional texts, for aid during activities for which they are personally completely responsible.
As the classic line from Inviticus recounts: "I am the captain of my fate, I am the master of my soul".

mikk

<The bible is a horror story of murder, manipulation, lying, genocide, and evil ...>

AND misogyny:

‘Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.’ (I Timothy 2:11-14)

‘For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.’ (I Corinthians 11:8-9)

‘For from garments cometh a moth, and from women wickedness.’ (Eccles. 42:13-14)

‘Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die.’ (Eccles. 25:22)

‘You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his male or female servant, or his ox or donkey ... (Exodus 20:17)

‘A woman’s vow is meaningless unless approved by her husband or father. But if her husband nullifies them … then none of the vows or pledges that came from her lips will stand. (Numbers 30:1-16)

‘… the impurity of [a woman’s] monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening ... Anything she lies on during her period will be unclean, and anything she sits on will be unclean… Anyone who touches her bed will be unclean... Anyone who touches anything she sits on will be unclean; they must wash their clothes and bathe with water and they will be unclean till evening …’ (Leviticus 15: 19-31)

‘Any man who reads of an Online Opinion post that comes from a female poster will be unclean … and any keyboard he touches will be unclean and any chair he sits on will be unclean, and he must wash his clothes and bathe with water and will be unclean till evening.’ (Killarney 1:1)

Christianity is very confronting to you Killarney, quite obviously.
And if the husband must submit to the wife, then that is ok?

It's what you imply. You also imply by your ridicule of Christian ethics, a disdain of the patriarchal family, and as a consequence obviously, by implication, aspire to a world of woman domination, or a matriarchal family unit.
You can have that easily under secular ethics, through a specific Centrelink single parent pension.

As Christ is the head of the church, so the husband is the the head of the family. It's the Christian way.
If you don't consent to the principals of patriarchy, then you are simply less than a Christian, and your opinions on Christianity are irrelevant !

Here is a cherry pick:

Ephesians 5:22-23
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour.

Dear Jardine,

Good luck with trying to find any ethics in nature: so far, no trace or hint of goodness or evilness were ever discovered by natural science: neither such particle, nor such wave, nor such dimension or force, zilch. Nature doesn't care in the least about aggression and suffering as all planets continue in the same trajectory regardless.

We certainly need ethics, but why should we require them to be rational and/or natural? Shouldn't we just be satisfied when they do their job?

I can understand the fear that with the demise of theism we could be left without ethics, but I believe that the direction in which you are searching for alternatives will prove futile. My personal solution is to trust in God, stop trying to improve the world and instead try my best to improve my own ethics - yet if this particular solution doesn't suit you, that's OK, I can still see other possibilities which are non-theistic. Nevertheless, they do require one kind or another of metaphysics. Physics alone, I'm afraid, will not do the trick.

---

Such place where scarcity exists, is unworthy of the name "Garden of Eden". Those few remaining places on earth that to a degree resemble that concept, are indeed scarcely populated. Destroying a Garden of Eden by irresponsible procreation, is indeed a sin, indeed unethical - and so is the biblical injunction when taken literally, to "fill the earth" [Genesis 1:28].

diver dan

'You also imply by your ridicule of Christian ethics, a disdain of the patriarchal family, and as a consequence obviously, by implication, aspire to a world of woman domination, or a matriarchal family unit.'

Oh, OK. I get it. The only alternative to a world in which women are subservient to men is a world in which men are subservient to women.

There is no possible world in which a husband and wife, or man and woman, are equal partners in a caring, giving, supportive relationship. If you have any biblical quotes to share along those lines, I'd be happy to read them.

That's the whole problem with the bible. It's based almost entirely on the principle of domination and obedience of someone to someone else.

'As Christ is the head of the church, so the husband is the the head of the family. It's the Christian way./ If you don't consent to the principals of patriarchy, then you are simply less than a Christian, and your opinions on Christianity are irrelevant!'

Guilty as charged. Proud to be 'less than a Christian', but that does not make my opinions on Christianity irrelevant - quite the opposite. In addition, any husband of mine who expects me to 'consent to the principles of patriarchy' can go take a flying leap.

Yuyustu,

We don’t need there to be ethics in nature. There doesn’t need to be a “particle, nor such wave, nor such dimension or force, zilch”. Because ethics are a social construct, and even holy books, to varying degrees were early attempts that such developing constructs.

<<… but why should we require [ethics] to be rational and/or natural?>>

Because, by requiring that they be rational, we help to ensure that they do their job effectively. See it as a kind of shortcut, rather than taking blind stabs in the dark and wiping out God-knows-how-many-people out in the process.

<<Shouldn't we just be satisfied when they do their job?>>

If an ethic, or set of ethics, based on religious mythology works, then obviously the underlying principals were rational, and so the supernatural element was unnecessary and could have been by-passed.

<<I can understand the fear that with the demise of theism we could be left without ethics, but I believe that the direction in which you are searching for alternatives will prove futile. My personal solution is to trust in God, …>>

Then both your fear and trust are misplaced, because what gods believe are best for their people is, co-incidentally, what the people believe is best for the survival of that group, in the context of the times. The reason many of the ways of the old gods don’t work now, however, is because we are more of a global community now rather than a series of fragmented tribal communities. But as we modernise, so too do the gods (albeit with a lag).

What your personal god believes is ethical behaviour is, co-incidentally, what you think is ethical. There have been studies using brain scan imaging that can attest to this. So you can skip the middleman and simply do what you think is right, which has been strongly influenced by the modern societies that you insist you are not a part of.

Okay, I was just about to give up: Manichaeism rules, it's all either-or. We can learn nothing from history. Religious principles can't spawn non- or anti-religious hypotheses. If some of the ancient Greeks believed the world was round, and about forty thousand kilometres in circumference, and about 150 million km from the Sun, and if you believe that, then you're an ancient Greek. We can't escape our past. Okay, got it.

Then a glimmer of hope, from AJ:

"If an ethic, or set of ethics, based on religious mythology works, then obviously the underlying principals were rational, and so the supernatural element was unnecessary and could have been by-passed."

Or superseded. Or transcended, and given a life of its own.

Thank you, AJ, now we're getting somewhere :)

Joe

>> If an ethic, or set of ethics, based on religious mythology works, then … the supernatural element was unnecessary and could have been by-passed. <<

This reminds me of the old joke about the missionary and cannibals:The cannibals valued the missionary’s ability to forecast their weather, until they found out that this was due to his rheumatic leg. So they killed and ate him, except for that leg that they used as a barometer. In other words, they found out that the missionary (except for that leg) was “unnecessary and could have been by-passed."

The role of the missionary of whom only his rheumatic leg was found useful is often played by Christianity and religion in general.

Amusing joke, George. However, it is not analogous to my statement because the missionary was not unnecessary and could not be by-passed. The joke assumes that religion is a necessary component, yet I just explained why it isn’t. At least not anymore.

AJ,
The joke is not about the missionary whether or not he could be bypassed, but about the canibals who thought he could.

Anyhow, I wrote “it reminded me” (and possibly others). It obviously does not remind you since you have probably a different understanding of how ethical, rational and aesthetic aspects are knit together in religion which I like to see as the “elephant” in the anscient Indian story studied by the “six blind men“: a psychologist, an anthropologist, a sociologist, an evolutionist a philosopher, an ethicist, a historian (sorry, that makes seven). They all can agree that there indeed is a phenomenon called religion, but each one can see only some manifestations of it - some see mainly its ethical, some mainly its rational some its aesthetic features but have no idea what this “elephant” actually is, what is its purpose or why it is there at all.

That makes no difference to my rebuttal, George.

<<The joke is not about the missionary whether or not he could be bypassed, but about the canibals who thought he could.>>

But I’ll re-phrase what I said for your sake:

The joke is not analogous to my statement because people are not mistaken in their belief that religion is something that is unnecessary and can be by-passed.

The bottom line is that the joke assumes that religion is a necessary component to ethics, yet I have explained why it isn’t. The joke makes a false assumption regardless of how you want to frame it.

The joke may be a more appropriate analogy in other contexts (although I can’t imagine an area in which religion would be so indispensable that its function could never have been performed by a more secular mechanism such that the rest of the missionary's body would be analogous to it), but it’s not appropriate in this one.

Firstly, if I was to: "wonder whether we couldn't go direct to ethics without going via supernatural fables", this could be problematic for myself and potentially others.

When I was at a Christian high school, (with health studies) I decided to go on a vegetarian diet for three weeks and have stayed vegetarian ever since. This movement has provided myself with a peaceful lifestyle that I highly appreciate and realise that I may not have received if I was at a public high school.

Furthermore, "what is the moral basis of marriage?"... (or I would argue any social activity)...

"Whatever societies deem it to be. Marriage (or social activities in general) (are), after all, a social construct."

So societies now decide a social construct? Which ones? How? When and where? This is very complex in regards to those questions (any many others) in the context that there are at least two human based elements of society, in which both (at a reasonable level) need to respect or have an acceptance of an idea or ideas that have been created or put forward.

Firstly there is a view of society, like say people living a street or local town or suburb and then secondly, (societies) such as groups or organisations. These elements can be politically neutral, whilst others strong minded or very political.

It is unlikely, that any of these elements will be able to reach a social contract of some nature or accept the view of another. It is something that humans will have to live with and learn to adapt to. Finally, if one wants to lecture others about ethics, I could start a focus about Christian vegetarianism but I'm not going to though, as I simply do not accept such a move is appropriate.

What do you mean “now”, NathanJ.

<<So societies now decide a social construct?>>

Who else did you think was going to do it for us? The god(s) you don’t believe in?

Perhaps “determine” would have been a word that you would have found less upsetting?

<<Which ones?>>

All of them.

<<How?>>

That would depend on the social construct one is talking about. Some by the pen, some by the sword, some by an unconscious and/or directionless ever-shifting zeitgeist, some by a combination thereof.

<<When and where?>>

Everywhere, all the time.

This rest of your post makes no sense at all. However, it sounds to me like you are once again getting upset at my disdain for religion and think that it is somehow unwarranted or unhelpful, despite my previous efforts to explain to you in great detail exactly why my disdain is justified, and constructive even.

Finally, I would add that spruiking religion as a necessary factor for a lifestyle change that has brought you peace (I bet the slaves in the US between 1619-1864 would be relieved to hear about that at least) is a non sequitur as it does not sound to me as though one could attribute it to religion any more than one could attribute it to the fact that it was a school in the first place, and less so to the fact that the place was probably a private school, and had “health studies” (whatever they are).

I knew this article would bring out the deicides amongst us. Those of you who fit this description ought to pause and ask yourself why you hate the Bible so much and try to discount its effect. Or worse, defame it.

Of course it is a collection of books, and excludes other books that could have been included. So what? That doesn't invalidate its effect. Although the idea that somehow it was an invention of the Roman Empire, or the Church fathers, demonstrates how few scholars there are on this forum. The Jewish Bible predates Jesus by several hundred years in its last books, and much more in its earliest books.

Then there is the idea that it is the product of red neck desert dwellers. Israel was part of what is known as the "fertile crescent" and was a reasonably desireable place to live. And Jews were valued all over the Mediterannean as clerks and courtiers. Their concentration on understanding the written word and arguing about their Bible paid dividends.

While some of you sneer at their "sky fairy", the Jewish God is much more defensible than the Olympian deities who all apparently lived on Mt Olympus, and other pagan deities with similar attributes. Or the Eastern Mediterranean worship of kings and emperors, as well as ancestors, as being gods. Christianity exported monotheism to the pagan world, which provided a more scientific way of looking at existence than spending your whole life trying to avoid offending a tribe of arbitrary gods, or buying them off with sacrifices.

You might also consider that if it wasn't for the Christian bible, you wouldn't be able to sneer at parts of the bible for treating others, like women, slaves and homosexuals, as less than human. You wouldn't have the sense this was wrong, because human rights as we understand them are mostly a Christian invention.

Yuyutsu, Graham
"Good luck with trying to find any ethics in nature: so far, no trace or hint of goodness or evilness were ever discovered by natural science.

Not by natural science: by argumentation.

"We certainly need ethics, but why should we require them to be rational and/or natural? Shouldn't we just be satisfied when they do their job?"
We should be satisfied when they do their job, but they can't do their job when they're irrational.

The ethical problem is, at root, how to deal justly with the problem of scarcity, because if scarcity were not the problem, then A's use of resources could not possibly conflict with B's, even in theory, and there would be no possibility of inter-human conflict, and no possibility of any ethical issue.

Where theistic ethics do their job, it's because they have blundered - by way of fables of superbeings and flying donkies - onto a viable and *rational* ethic.

However the fundamental irrationality of the belief in God will always give rise to fundamental errors of ethics. What this means is that we need the *factual* and *logical* basis of ethics to be true, otherwise the ethics will miscarry. And sky-fairies, flying donkeys and such, are not true.

But despair not.

Argumentation presupposes a certain ethical axiom - i.e. you're not trying to use brute force to settle the question in issue, because if you were, argumentation would be redundant. Argumentation means recourse to rationality, and rationality rules out certain propositions and classes of propositions.

Therefore we are capable of a rational ethics. And I humbly submit that we can identify it if people either admit it, or must contradict themselves to deny it.

How about that?

AJ
“So you can skip the middleman and simply do what you think is right,”

Aye there’s the rub. Because if people simply do what they think is right, that, of itself, won’t mean it’s ethically right, will it?

In the biblical text are found passages that are extremely ethical, but also other passages that are extremely unethical.

The bible supports an ethical way of life, not because what's actually written in it, but rather for what it symbolises. We don't need a book in order to tell that certain things are ethical and others are not, but the presence of a book can focus our attention and remind us to follow what we already know, doing good and abstaining from evil.

Let me provide a personal example:

In my youth I heard rumours that the Beatles were God.
So I bought their record, "Abbey Road".
Mind you, at the time my English was still very poor, I think I knew the word 'road', but certainly had no idea what 'abbey' meant.

Then I listened with innocence and my very-limited English:

"Come Together"... must be a call for prayer as in "O Come All Ye Faithful".
"Something [in the way she moves]"... must be telling about a divine, enlightened person.
"Octopus's Garden"... must refer to the Garden of Eden (what's an 'octopus' anyway?)
"I Want You"... God, of course!
"Here Comes the Sun"... that must be spiritual indeed, there is hope...
"She Came Into the Bathroom Window"... Saint and Saviour, she must have come to save the people locked inside!
"You Never Give me your Money"... because by your grace I need no material possessions. Indeed, "1,2,3,4,5,6,7, All good children go to heaven".
"Golden Slumbers"... Once there was a way to get back homeward... back home to God, tears fill my eyes.
"Carry that Weight"... what an obvious spiritual theme as in "Lamb of God, thou taketh away the sins of the world".

I also watched the film "Yellow Submarine", hardly understood anything, but what a classic struggle of Good against Evil.

How could I ever guess at that age that THE-BEATLES sang about drugs and crime? All I knew is what I THOUGHT they were singing, which gave me solace and inspiration to be good.

Why not? All you need is Love, Love is all you need!

(cont.)
So it’s not enough to dispense with the theistic middle-man. We have to positively identify a theory of ethics that is factually and logically true - or at least not demonstrably false - to begin with. This doesn't just rule out sky-fairies. It also rules out 'ethics is whatever anyone asserts it is', because this does not rule out 'might is right', which is the opposite of ethics.

I submit that the way we will know when we have positively identified a rational ethic is because anyone must either
a) admit it, in which case there’s no issue, or
b) perform a self-contradiction in denying it. Then we’ll know they’re wrong.

How about that?

Killarney
I agree with your critique of Christianity.

"There is no possible world in which a husband and wife, or man and woman, are equal partners in a caring, giving, supportive relationship."

But how can they be equal in their biomass interest in a child? How can they be equal in their ability to give birth? How can they be equal in their ability to fertilise a member of the opposite sex? How can they be equal in their material interest in the opposite sex? How can they be equal at all?

And why should they?

Equalitarianism is an anti-human ideology that is factually, logically and ethically false.

Why isn't it enough that relations between the sexes should be based on consent?

Why should anyone be threatened with unequal force, to make them obey your belief in the value of equality, that has no basis in fact or logic, let alone ethics?

Killarney...your very sensitive to the subject of domination. But domination is not what the Bible implies when it specifies a patriarchal family unit.
It presents as example (my post), Christ as the head of the church.
It is hard to imagine Christ as hard task-master, when viewed through his living example.
Christianity is the religion of peace and respect; turn the other cheek to your enemies is the extreme.
Living the Christian example entirely, is an impossible task. So there will be those men among other men who of course, will wish to dominate their woman, expecting a form of cowering obedience. That is simply unchristian, and does not follow along with the Christian ethic.

A family is like a business. Someone has to be the boss Killarney, or the business rocks around until it goes broke!

Obviously you chose your men unwisely I would suggest. Very unfortunate for you!

AJ,
As I said, the quote reminded ME of the joke, it could not remind YOU since we have different understandings of religion and ethics.

Dear Jardine,

Sorry to break your post in two. I did not see your post before posting mine.

Argumentation... indeed, how can one argue without axioms?
Axioms cannot be rational - or they would have been theorems.
This doesn't bother me and most serious theologians, but it seems to bother you: I am more than happy to live with non-rational axioms, especially since I believe that there aren't any others.

One common pitfall, for example, is to base an ethical "axiom" on the assumption that mankind must survive. However, the desire for mankind to survive is irrational and it renders the so-called "axiom" as no more than a tactic in the service of the irrational (survival instinct).

«Argumentation presupposes a certain ethical axiom - i.e. you're not trying to use brute force to settle the question in issue, because if you were, argumentation would be redundant.»

So far so good, but the next sentence does not follow:

«Argumentation means recourse to rationality»

False: rationality and brute-force are not the sole two options.

Now I, without any pretence of rationality, obtain my axiom that "brute force is wrong" from Patanjali's Yoga Sutras [2:35] regarding Ahimsa (non-violence): I want to reach God and I have faith in Patanjali that violence is the foremost obstacle on that path.

That's good enough for me, but where do you obtain your axiom(s) from?

Yuyutsu

“Now I, without any pretence of rationality…”

Isn’t this reasoning: “I want to reach God and I have faith in Patanjali that violence is the foremost obstacle on that path.?”

I never said that the only possibilities are rationality and brute force. However I think we can say that the only possibilities are rationality and irrationality. And all history has shown, that irrationality in ethics has often been used as a cover and pretext for brute force and aggression.

I don’t see why an axiom “cannot be rational”.

For example, the axiom that I’m contending for, is that “you cannot argue that you cannot argue”. The reason is, because argumentation pre-supposes that you can be persuaded by reason. Argumentation presupposes that the issue you’re trying to resolve can be resolved by argumentation; otherwise there’d be no point in arguing. Therefore I think an axiom can be rational.

That’s where I get my axiom from.

From this I propose to submit for your, and others’ consideration a rational ethic that does not rely on God-stories, arbitrary postulates, or mere blind faith. The ethic is universally valid *in that* one either agrees with it, in which case there’s no issue, or must perform a self-contradiction to deny it, in which case one proves one’s objection wrong because irrational.

How about that?

Diver dan
Killarney believes that it’s okay to use aggressive violence, including threatening people with prison and rape, to force them to provide women unequally with the benefits of patriarchy, while unequally imposing the costs on men. This bigoted sexist state of female privilege backed by violence and double-talk is what she calls “equality”.

That’s true isn’t it, Killarney?

Hello AJ Phillips,

My posting was not based around any basis in getting upset upon any persons disdain for religion.

At present around 2-5% of Australians are vegetarians. If majority societies (percentage wise) were to decide a social construct (in any form), people (of any type) face the reality of other people (imposing personal values onto others). So this could involve myself forcing a person to become vegetarian, or someone forcing myself to eat meat.

What a person chooses to do with their life, personally within their own scope, should only be of that person's choosing, not of a societies choosing, nor of that societies development or what a society has decided upon within a social construct.

To develop social constructs in itself is extremely difficult, and I am talking about social constructs that actually work. So why some want to continue with this approach now, rather than live as an individual and respect the personal scope of individuals is what I question. Social constructs are dangerous. Firstly having to use man made items, like a pen (you can hurt someone physically with a pen) or with a sword (you can chop someone's head off) with that.

Further as you did list some other examples of developing a social construct, a person can develop a very long, time consuming list of ideas on how to develop a social construct (and how it would work) or accept reality and see that humans only have so much time on planet Earth and that developing time consuming, complex social constructs is of limited value.

There is more than one society on planet Earth, in fact multiple. To expect these to all co-exist very quickly (through the use of pen or a sword for example or parliamentary wordings (known as legislation) is not realistic. Living within a personal scope, that sees another's personal scope as important to keep (and that means respecting all people), rather than taking a high moral and ethical stance, can be a better way to live with others.

Graham Y

'You wouldn't have the sense this was wrong, because human rights as we understand them are mostly a Christian invention.'

That's highly debatable. To give one example, the Brehon Laws of Ireland are believed to have originated around 1000 BCE and continued in Ireland up until the British outlawed it. It's an extremely sophisticated system that was based on everyone having an 'honour price', which was based on their importance within society. Obviously, people of a higher class had a higher honour price, but all members of society had rights, especially women. The laws were heavily intertwined with their spiritual beliefs that invested everything and everyone with its own spiritual importance. And incidentally, there was no capital or even corporal punishment under the Brehon Laws.

There are equivalents right across the pre-Christian and non-Christian world. As those tribal societies became more hierarchical or were overtaken by more aggressive powers, so too did their egalitarian religions become subsumed into a canon of beliefs based on domination and obedience.

It's a matter of what came first - the chicken or the egg. Does a set of religious principles create a society or does a society create a set of religious principles? For the most part, those who reject the concept of an omniscient 'sky god' lean to the latter.

And finally, I think you are doing people here a disservice in referring to 'how few scholars there are on this forum'. Both sides have shown scholarly arguments in addition to deeply intuitive ones. I for one have read extensively about Christian history and Paganism. Also, rejecting the Bible is not the same as 'hating' it. Many people reject both the Bible and Christianity, not because they 'hate' it but because it simply does not work for them.

The Christian ethic exudes equality in a true sense. The true sense of it recognises the need for a hierarchy in a balanced society.

Not everyone can be the boss: not everyone should be the boss.

It recognises a natural position for gender in society, and supports those in their allotted position with advice and guidance through its teachings.

So it's adventurous and risky in terms of individual survival, (thus also for a stable society), to step from the well-worn path, offering untried experimental transpositions of gender roles as its alternative.

Those offering nueva-Godless alternate paths, have in fact nothing to offer that is as proved as the old way. Overthrowing established norms of gender positioning brings great harm and risk of collapse, to a Christian-defined society.

This can be resisted by dismantling single parent pensions; by limiting abortions to a narrower group, defined to urgent medical necessity. Removing no-fault divorce. Mandating marriage between male and female. Eliminating legal protections for de facto relationships.
Restricting adoptions to married couples. Censoring anti-Christian bias of the ABC broadcaster.
Encouraging leasing of the public school system to religious institutions, (inclusive of Muslim populations). Ban alcohol advertising. Introduce corporal punishment for drug dealers. Etc.

diver dan

'Killarney...your very sensitive to the subject of domination. But domination is not what the Bible implies when it specifies a patriarchal family unit.'

Whether or not I am personally 'sensitive' is not the issue. I reject domination, because I've seen over and over again that it's destructive and counter-productive. Judicious leadership of the family - applied in partnership by the mother and father, and with welcome input from the children - is highly workable.

And I would think that the quotes I gave (a selective list - there are many, many others) very much imply that dominance and submission of the woman (and children) to the man are the dictatorial bible template for the family norm.

'Obviously you chose your men unwisely I would suggest. Very unfortunate for you!'

As I've been happily married for almost thirty years, I'm still waiting to see whether or not I chose my man unwisely.

Dear Jardine,

“you cannot argue that you cannot argue”

Sure I can! My argument would then be incorrect, but nothing stops me from arguing. This reminds me something really funny about Australians: they keep saying "I can't do this-and-that" when what they really mean is that doing so would be illegal. I have to keep reminding them, often a number of times until they get it, that: "You CAN do it. You may be afraid of the law alright, but it doesn't mean that you cannot!".

When it comes to ethics, I believe that the only possibilities are conscious irrationality and unconscious irrationality. Yes, it is possible, common and rational to draw complex conclusions from simple axioms, but the axioms are still irrational.

«Argumentation presupposes that the issue you’re trying to resolve can be resolved by argumentation»

Not necessarily, although it's common for one or both sides to believe and hope that there is at least some positive chance to resolve the argument by argumentation. It's just that... people are not rational beings!

«otherwise there’d be no point in arguing»

And indeed, this is often the case.

«Therefore I think an axiom can be rational.»

All you need then is to present just ONE such axiom.

«Therefore I think an axiom can be rational.»

Conclusions can be rational, but not axioms. For example, “I want to reach God“ is an axiom; “I have faith in Patanjali that violence is the foremost obstacle on that path“ is an axiom, but “I should refrain from violence“ is a rational conclusion of the two.

«in which case one proves one’s objection wrong because irrational.»

Irrational does not imply wrong - only a contradiction can prove something wrong. Gödel proved that most statements are irrational, in the sense that neither them nor their opposite can ever be proved.

«From this I propose to submit for your, and others’ consideration a rational ethic that does not rely on God-stories, arbitrary postulates, or mere blind faith.»

Undoubtedly ethics can exist without God-stories, but then they would still rely in blind-faith on some other axiom(s).

Graham,

>>Although the idea that somehow it was an invention of the Roman Empire, or the Church fathers, demonstrates how few scholars there are on this forum.<<

Unfortunately, there are many other “ideas” that demonstrate this finding of yours. At least where the topic involves religion in some form. However, I do not think it was always so: I remember many posts in the past from atheists, or other non-Christians, that I learned from.

Even now, those Christians (or others) here, who are interested in learning from atheist scholars, can be grateful to the author of this article for reminding them of Habermas’ (see my earlier post) recent interest in religion. The quote given in the article is preceded by (for those who can understand):

" From the sociological point of view, the modern forms of consciousness encompassing abstract right, modern science, and autonomous art could never have developed apart from the organizational forms of Hellenized Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church, without the universities, monasteries, and cathedrals. This is especially true for the emergence of mental structures.

In contrast with archaic mythic narratives, the idea of God - the idea of the single, invisible God the Creator and Redeemer - already signified a breakthrough to an entirely new perspective. With this idea, the finite human mind … achieved a standpoint that transcends everything this-worldly. But only with the transition to modernity does the knowing and morally judging subject assimilate the divine standpoint in such a way that it accomplishes two momentous idealizations. On the one hand, it objectifies external nature as the totality of states of affairs and events which are connected in a law-like manner and, on the other, it expands the familiar social world into an unbounded community of all responsible agents. In this way, the door is opened for reason to penetrate the opaque world in both dimensions, in the form of the cognitive rationalization of a fully objectified nature and of the social-cognitive rationalization of the totality of morally regulated interpresonal relations."

George

'... the modern forms of consciousness encompassing abstract right, modern science, and autonomous art could never have developed apart from the organizational forms of Hellenized Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church, without the universities, monasteries, and cathedrals.'

I know that you are quoting. However, I strongly disagree. This is one of the conceits of Christianity - i.e. that the advancements of the modern world could not have evolved without it (that's if I'm correctly following your train of thought).

The pagan world of Old Europe, the Middle East and North Africa had a thriving intellectual class. For example, the druids of Old Europe have been reduced in modern thought and Harry Potter books to sorcerers with funny hats and crazy priests who read entrails and oversaw sacrifices; but they were actually the educated class that comprised doctors, lawyers, architects, artists, scientists and writers, who had as much of an impact on their societies as the professions, the arts, advertising, public relations, and the music and film industries have today. As their societies succumbed to the takeover of Christianity, the former druid professions were subsumed into the religious orders, which monopolised all intellectual thought.

The educated classes of ancient Judea wrote much of their texts in Greek. The name ‘Jesus’ is a Greek derivative of ‘Joshua’ meaning ‘messiah’. The real or mythical Jesus would have drawn much of his teachings from pagan Greek philosophy. There are also gaps in his life story that indicate he may have travelled widely throughout the pagan world, including India.

Also, the successive sackings of the library of Alexandria, the most notable being the Christian destruction in 415 AD (and the brutal murder of the mathematician, philosopher and astronomer, Hypatia) brought to an end an almost thousand year old fountain of pagan cultural thought and scientific knowledge.

There is much more I could write about this, but word length and posting limits precludes this. Suffice to say that Christianity did not represent any break with the pagan past. It simply drew on the pagan past to create its new Christian world order.

Graham Y

"Christianity exported monotheism to the pagan world, which provided a more scientific way of looking at existence than spending your whole life trying to avoid offending a tribe of arbitrary gods, or buying them off with sacrifices."

No, that is a misrepresentation of Greco-Roman paganism, actually the opposite was true. Christianity's superstitions and primitive cosmology set back science for a thousand years.
Lucretius' remarkable poem on "On the Nature of Things" is indicative of the sophistication of 'pagan' intellectual traditions. It was the rediscovery of those traditions that provided the catalyst for the Renaissance and the gradual removal of Christianity's stifling influence.

Graham,

I think that you are wrong in saying that people "hate the bible".
If like me they reject its alleged factuality and false positioning as an arbiter of morality, then its effect on human behaviour ought be no more esteemed than any other reference book.

For that is what it is - merely as reference book amongst many others, and alluding to the nebulous concept of some kind of supreme being.

Man is responsible for his own outcomes, not some mythical ruler.

Killarney,

Thank you for your post. The readers here are free to choose between Habermas’s and your interpretations of the historical facts, some of which you list. However, I doubt it that he would have been unaware of them before coming to the conclusion that I quoted.

I am not an expert on these matters, and as far as Habermas is concerned, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes him as, “one of the most influential philosophers in the world” (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/habermas/). This, of course, does not imply that his insight must be better than yours.

Killarney
“I reject domination”

You reject political feminism, do you? You reject equal pay legislation, sex discrimination legislation, and taxpayer funding of abortion, do you?

Yuyutsu
> “you cannot argue that you cannot argue”

>> Sure I can! My argument would then be incorrect

It is enough for me to point to the fact that it is common ground between us that your argument is incorrect.

So we have established EITHER
a) that you cannot argue that you cannot argue
b) that it is incorrect to deny it.

QED.

“All you need then is to present just ONE such axiom.

Okay, how about this one: “man acts”?

George, GrahamY
It is true that many of our conceptions of right originated in Christianity. But that doesn’t mean that they could or would not have come about otherwise.

History is full of scientific advances, and other ideas, happening more or less simultaneously, or at least independently; and the same may have been true of conceptions of right.

Christianity may indeed have retarded moral progress for a thousand years, as it retarded intellectual progress.

Habermas is not justified in saying abstract right, modern science, and autonomous art “could never have” developed apart from [Christianity]. His evidence is only that it did.

'Christianity may indeed have retarded moral progress for a thousand years, as it retarded intellectual progress. '

Oh dear Jardine you are obviously blinded to the dumbed down secular university trained generation today. Facist, socialist, feminsist religion has led to the slaughter of millions. We have managed to kill industries with Green madness, normalise homosexual behaviour and embrace Islam. Great ' intellectual' progress. Give is a break!

runner

No I am not blinded to the anti-humanity of the socialists and equalitarians, as anyone who has read my posts here will know.

But that doesn't mean that Christianity did not retard intellectual progress for a thousand years, does it?

Dear Jardine,

OK, so if I argue and deny that I argue then I am incorrect, this is pure mathematical logic.

Then you exclaim, «QED»: what exactly have you proven? A mathematical theorem? How is this related to ethics?

«Okay, how about this one: “man acts”?»

Yes, this is an axiom, but not a rational axiom. Indeed some schools agree with it, but others don't. Not only that, those other schools can bring quite convincing and rational arguments against this axiom.

Never mind, suppose we accept this axiom - how can you derive an ethical system from it?
Are you claiming perhaps as a second axiom that action is better than inaction (and therefore it is good to preserve society because then acts will continue)?
Such a claim would be irrational because you cannot find any particles (or waves or dimensions or forces, etc.) of "better" (or goodness) in nature, so you can count (or weigh) them in action, then count them in inaction, then say "based on my measurements, here there are more of it than there".

The bible states: "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good". You could accept it on faith, or you could accept something else on faith in something else. What I am saying is, that either way, it will remain irrational. I am not ashamed in being irrational.

'But that doesn't mean that Christianity did not retard intellectual progress for a thousand years, does it?'

I suspect Jardine the Roman Catholic church (if that it what you mean by Christianity) retarded a lot of things. You would not have to look very hard to see that many of the scienitific advances were achieved by men of the Christian faith. Compared with much of the pseudo science of today these men would be considered a genius. The likes of Dawkins and gw high priests are pygmy's. Look at the twits many with phd's who speak on Q &A. They repeat socialist dogmas as if somehow proven.

“OK, so if I argue and deny that I argue then I am incorrect”

If you argue and deny that you argue, you perform a self-contradiction, which is logically incoherent.

Therefore we are entitled to conclude that it is wrong to argue that one cannot argue, because
a) You had to argue in order to do so
b) we are agreed that it’s incorrect to the extent you say it is incorrect.

“this is pure mathematical logic.”

1. What’s wrong with that?

“Yes, this [‘man acts’] is an axiom, but not a rational axiom.”

2. Why isn’t it rational?

“Indeed some schools agree with it, but others don't.”

3. How do you know they disagree, if not from their actions?

“Not only that, those other schools can bring quite convincing and rational arguments against this axiom.”

4. Can they do that without taking action :-)?

“Never mind, suppose we accept this axiom - how can you derive an ethical system from it?”

I can try, and you can show me where I’m wrong, if you can.

Could you please answer my above questions first?

Posted by Ponder, Saturday, 25 March 2017 8:14:30 PM
As the classic line from Inviticus recounts: "I am the captain of my fate, I am the master of my soul".

Kindly indulge the petty imperatives of an inveterate pedant and trivia fanatic when I write to correct an error of minor consequence on your behalf.
The last verse of a brief poem written by British poet and critic William Ernest Henley [1849-1903] is...

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

Henley was diagnosed with tubercular arthritis at age 12 in 1861 and his father died the following year. Later, one of William's legs was amputated below the knee. His other leg was saved by many years of radical surgery by famed medical pioneer Joseph Lister. In 1875, at the age of 26 during his confinement for surgery, he wrote the poem as untitled. It was unpublished until 1888 when his publisher, Cornish editor and author Arthur Quiller-Couch, gave it the title INVICTUS [Latin for "unconquered"]
A.Q-C, himself a prolific author, wrote under the pseudonym Q and his monumental OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH VERSE was a favourite quote source of John Mortimer's fictional lawyer Horace Rumpole.

As for the christian bible; Even as fiction it has serious faults. Despite its several millennia of constant publicity [favourable and unfavourable], a campaign unprecedented in publishing history and probably never to be repeated, today it would struggle to find a mainstream publisher as a new work of literature from a new author.
I find Greg Clarke to be something of a fraud and hypocrite. Asserting obliquity is a literary device that puts him in the same advocacy class as a car salesman or a real estate agent.

Dear Jardine,

«Therefore we are entitled to conclude that it is wrong to argue that one cannot argue»

Wait... we agree that arguing that one cannot argue would be incorrect, but we haven't established that it would be wrong! Normally it's justified to say that "telling a lie (or otherwise saying something that isn't so) is wrong" because we already have an agreed system of ethics... but here we're still trying to establish a foundation for such a system, so we cannot use it yet.

1.

Mathematics is not wrong, but it's like a world of its own: it doesn't automatically say anything about the real world. For example, the following logical-mathematical statement is correct: "If all men can speak and Socrates is a man, then Socrates can speak". However, it cannot tell us that Socrates can speak until and unless we can ascertain (in non-mathematical ways) that all men can speak and Socrates is a man (both incorrect, because some men are dumb and Socrates is now a corpse, not a man).

2.

Because you cannot prove that "man acts" in a rational manner. You see a man, you see action, but that the action is performed by the man relies on a leap of faith. In fact, some schools of thought do not take this leap of faith and instead claim, for example, that the action is performed by nature or by God.

3.

You are right, I don't know, I only know what they say, so they could in fact agree, but lie to me. My assumption that they say what they actually believe, is irrational.

4.

Well by definition, if they do it then they do it, but maybe they don't? Maybe it's an illusion? maybe someone/something else produced those arguments? maybe it was created in my own mind, maybe it wasn't done at all?

Suppose someone played a piece of music, so you think, but then you discover that they were sleep-walking and had no idea that their body produced this music, then who actually produced that music? Or could it be your own dream?

Jardine,

>> It is true that many of our conceptions of right originated in Christianity. But that doesn’t mean that they could or would not have come about otherwise.<<

This is about as meaningful as saying: “It is true that Mr and Mrs Yoursurname are your parents. But that doesn’t mean that some other couple could or would not have become your parents.”

You can verify statements about natural science phenomena in a laboratory to see what would happen “if”. You cannot do that with statements dealing with historical events.

>> But that doesn't mean that Christianity did not retard intellectual progress for a thousand years, does it? <<

How can you verify this? What civilisation can you point to, that did not go through a stage of Christendom, and where the "intellectual progress" (you probably mean Enlightenment and the ensuing flourish of natural and social sciences up to the present) reached the same levels as in the West?

Besides, when you drive your car it is important that you reach your destiny (“Intellectual progress”?) and not whether or how many times you had to brake or even stop on the way.

As for (the atheist) Habermas’s “justification” for saying things implying a historical insight different from yours, see my post to Killarney.

Not quite, George.

<<This is about as meaningful as saying: “It is true that Mr and Mrs Yoursurname are your parents. But that doesn’t mean that some other couple could or would not have become your parents.”>>

Because we can know why another couple cannot be the parents of a given individual, just as we can know that moral principles can come from sources other than Christianity.

Indeed, the moral principles in Christianity, too, are borrowed/derived from somewhere else. To any extent that Christianity is a cause of our moral principles, it is only a proximal cause. If you really want something to credit for our morality, then you need to look to the ultimate cause, which can only be found in the evolutionary sciences.

At the end of the day, though, I couldn’t really care less if Christianity was responsible for every good thing we enjoy. What matters is the truth of its claims, because without any truth to its claims, or at least the ability to verify their truth value, it can never be a reliable source of anything good in the future, nor can it ever be a reliable source of morality (as the Christian Right unwittingly reminds us of every day).

<<What civilisation can you point to, that did not go through a stage of Christendom, and where the "intellectual progress" (you probably mean Enlightenment and the ensuing flourish of natural and social sciences up to the present) reached the same levels as in the West?>>

This mistakes correlation for causation. The more Christian an American state is, the worse it fares in rankings relating to societal health, but that doesn’t mean that Christianity is the cause of poor societal health.

AJ

Sorry, you apparently did not understand my point, which is not surprising, therefore it was not addressed to you. The rest of your post is irrelevant to what I wrote (e.g. “American State” is not a civilisation, it is just an outgrowth from Christendom, so are other contemporary Western states). And you certainly are entitled to care less about whatever, which does not imply others should likewise; although I agree that Christianity is not necessarily the cause of poor societal health.

And again, as for Habermas’s atheist views - which were the reason I called Graham’s attention to him - please read the quote from him in the article and my post to Killarney.

it is very obvious that the hatred that secularist have for the great things that have flowed from Christ and His teachings simply come from their own lack of morals. The corruption of man is so evident to them (including in themselves) that they despise the fact that science is incapable of dealing with their own natures. THe bible proves true that by denying their Creator that are handed over to every foolish behaviour and dogma possible. The fundie athiest are not only a mean spirited mob but are totally irrational.

Yes, George, I understood your point.

<<Sorry, you apparently did not understand my point, which is not surprising, …>>

Your point was that we cannot know if the Western World would have flourished as well as it did without Christianity (or at all) because we can’t go back and repeat history to test this. If this was not your point, then I suggest you clarify what it is that you meant to say, because I don't think anyone would understand it.

Why would it not have been surprising had I not understood your point, by the way?

<<… therefore it was not addressed to you.>>

I would have thought it wasn’t addressed to me because you were responding to what Jardine said. Are you implying that you did consider addressing it to me too, but then decided that I wasn’t capable of understanding it? If so, why?

<<The rest of your post is irrelevant to what I wrote (e.g. “American State” is not a civilisation, it is just an outgrowth from Christendom, so are other contemporary Western states).>>

I think I have demonstrated otherwise, and your example does not support your claim that what I have said is irrelevant either, as whether or not an American state is a civilisation was irrelevant to my analogy.

<<And you certainly are entitled to care less about whatever, which does not imply others should likewise …>>

Of course it doesn't. What gave you the impression that I thought such a thing? And if you didn't think I thought that, then why would you say this?

<<And again, as for Habermas’s atheist views - which were the reason I called Graham’s attention to him - please read the quote from him in the article and my post to Killarney.>>

Yes, I read the quote. But going by your quote alone, I don't see how what Habermas has said contradicts anything I have said.

That the christian bible is/was a mainstay of western civilisation is clearly axiomatic. (note: it's A mainstay, not THE mainstay). Throughout the long progress of western civilisation to the current global pre-eminence, Christianity has been both an enabler and a bedrock. From the so-called Benedict Option where monastries shut themselves off from the chaos following the fall of the western Roman empire, keeping safe the knowledge and principles of western thought, the Church has been one of the societal structures that 'saved' and nartured those traits which make the west, the west.

This is not so surprising, since Christianity is a western religion. Its traits and underlying philosophy is based on western thought. 'The West' was, in its early phase, a Hellenistic invention, founded on the Plains of Marathon and the wonders of ancient Athens. The Israel of Jesus and his successors had been part of the Hellenistic sphere for over 300 years, and if not thoroughly Hellenised, it had absorbed or been influenced by this western culture. This is particularly so for those like Saul/Paul who carried the message to the gentiles and integrated that message into Rome's culture.

Christianity is a mainstay of western civilisation but equally western civilisation is a mainstay of Christianity. Its unclear to me that either can long survive without the other. Certainly we have more than a few examples where otherwise western socities have sidelined or rejected Christianity, and the results haven't been pretty.

/cont

/cont

Its not difficult to read the Bible with malice in mind and find reasons to disparage it. (One could do the same with almost any text as searching as the Bible).

That the Bible offers some cover for slavery is certainly true. It was after all written in periods when slavery was ubiquitous and unquestioned. But bear in mind that, as far as we know, only one civilisation in the long line of world civilisations, has ever moved to ban and delegitimise slavery. That civilisation was the west, based on the tenets of Christianity and the Christian texts and the men who championed that unique movement were entirely Christain in their thinking. They used those same texts to advance the cause of anti-slavery. All those 'rights' which we think of as being vital are western in origin and developed in socities based on Christian tenets.

Clearly Christianity is currently in decline, mirroring the decline in and of the west. I have grave misgivings about where this will lead. On the other hand, its never smart to decide long term results based on potentially short-term trends. The decline and/or death of Christianity has been forecast in the past, only to see it roar back into prominence. We, or more likely our grandkids will see, how this plays out.11111111111

Yuyutsu
I still can’t see why it’s a problem to say that it’s incorrect to argue that one cannot argue, and why it’s a problem that to conclude so involves mathematical logic.

Say, what would be an example of arguing that one cannot argue being incorrect, but still nevertheless right? What would be an example of such mathematical logic miscarrying in this particular case, i.e. the example of the issue whether one cannot argue that one cannot argue?

“In fact, some schools of thought do not take this leap of faith and instead claim, for example, that the action is performed by nature or by God.”

I don’t see how either of those can be described as “quite convincing or rational arguments”. What’s rational and convincing about the God bit? As for the nature bit, isn’t that just begging the question? To say “Fred acts” or “nature acts through Fred” – is that really saying something different? What is that really saying at all? What does it really convince you of? If it were true that nature, not man, acts in what appears to be human action – what does that really mean?

Can we agree as follows:
1. It is incorrect to say that one cannot argue that one cannot argue; but it may be right for some unspecified reason?
2. It is rational to say that man acts, except for the possibility that an alleged invisible magical superbeing acts instead and not man and this explains what appears to be human action; or it is rational to say that man acts, except for the possibility that “nature” acts instead of man (whatever that means)?
3. Any other reasons why it’s not rational to say that man acts?

Dear Jardine,

I can't see why we are digging deeper into what seems to me a side-issue, "man acts", rather than continue exploring what it has to do with ethics.

Example of incorrect-but-not-wrong: Mother pleads with an attacker not to shoot her child. Attacker says: "Stop arguing and take me to the money". Mother responds: "I'm not arguing, it's just that...". The mother was incorrect to say she wasn't arguing, but she was right to use this time-buying maneuver.

Yes, I can entertain you with many more examples why "man acts" is far from obvious, thus the conclusion "man acts" must rely on various assumptions, none of them rational.

Say a drunkard brakes a window, totally-unaware. Who broke that window?
Say a bird landed on the drunkard's face, so his arm jerked and threw the stone that broke the window. Who broke that window? The arm? the bird? the stone? the man? the booze? the window? God?

Can a man in a coma act? What's a "man" anyway? Say someone receives a heart-implant from a pig, is he still a man? What then if they receive a partial-brain-implant? What if a man is in a vegetative state where doctors can ask them yes/no answers, watch their brain-waves for their 60%-accurate answer, then act accordingly: is that man acting?

In the Bhagavad-Gita [11:34], Shri Krishna, an incarnation of God, urges Arjuna to fight, assuaging him that he'll incur no sin because He, Krishna, has already killed those enemies: "Dronacharya, Bheeshma, Jayadratha, Karna, and other brave warriors have already been killed by me. So slay them without being disturbed. Just fight and you will be victorious over your enemies in battle."

«what does that really mean?»

That we all rely on, sometimes-hidden, irrational and subjective assumptions when we come to form our world-view and ethics.

1. Yes.
2. No, as you can see there are myriad of other possibilities.
3. I could sure list more, but even if I couldn't, perhaps someone else could, or perhaps I could do so some other time, so the onus is on you to prove rationality.

Yuyutsu

I am interested in the proposition “man acts” because
a) I don’t see why an axiom cannot be rational,
b) I want to see what criticism you, or anyone, can make if I can put forward a rational ethics, and
c) also I am interested in objections to that particular proposition “man acts”.

“we all rely on, sometimes-hidden, irrational and subjective assumptions when we come to form our world-view and ethics.”

I’m sure we do, but the issue is whether an axiom can be rational.

About where it would be incorrect but nevertheless still right to argue that one cannot argue, that mother in your example was arguing that she is not arguing, not that she cannot argue. So that example does not disprove me.

So: got any other example?

As for “man acts”, I concede all examples such as
• Unconsciousness
• Coma
• Vegetable
• Intoxication to the point of stupefaction
• Knee-jerk reflex
• Etc.

However that leaves the everyday purposeful actions of 7 billion ordinary people, which is enough for my purposes.

As for what is a “man”, I will accept any dictionary definition. Issues of robotics don’t concern me; I will concede them from the outset if you like.

The more I think about it, to say that man does not act, but or because “God” acts, is to me no more convincing or rational than saying the Invisible Pink Unicorn or the Magic Flying Teapot acts. It has no real explaining power, and I don’t see how you can say it’s rational or quite convincing.

For example, Fred gets himself a drink of water because he's thirsty and wants to quench his thirst.

“Objection! Fred is not taking any action: the Invisible Magic Flying Spaghetti Monster is the real actor: He is just using Fred as the instrument of his getting Fred a drink of water.”

Come on. Is that your main argument?

(cont.)

And the same with not man, but “nature” acts. Which has more explaining power: that Fred gets himself a drink of water because he’s feeling thirsty; or that unknown planets in unknown galaxies trillions of light years away are the real acting agent, or part of the real acting agents, causing Fred to get a drink?

Again, if that’s your main argument, I beg we may now move on to entertain conjecture of my hypothesis THAT we are capable of a rational ethics, if you’re interested.

“3. I could sure list more, but even if I couldn't, perhaps someone else could, or perhaps I could do so some other time, so the onus is on you to prove rationality.”

By all means list more. Apart from what I concede, I don’t think you have really listed any.

That some alleged unspecified person “could” do it is not a convincing argument.

Establishing rationality requires me to establish a basis in reason. I think I have established the basis in reason of the proposition that “man acts”: namely, that human action is purposeful behaviour.

And I think I have established the irrationality of the propositions that man does not act but instead an alleged invisible supernatural being acts; or that “nature” acts. What is their basis in reason?

I cannot be given an unfalsifiable standard. If you don’t and won’t accept that an axiom can be rational, then what proof of mine would you ever accept that an axiom is or can be rational, please?

AJ,

OK, I agree, you understood my point (I never claimed you would not be able to understand it), and I agree the quote from Habermas does not contradict anything you have said. And, of course, I agree that “moral principles can come from sources other than Christianity”. This, however, is unrelated to the fact that you cannot replace XY’s parents to see how different he would come out, and the same with “historical parentage”.

mhaze,

I can endorse every sentence of your interesting posts. You mention the Benedict option (named after 6th century Benedict of Nursia). It is a meaningful coincidence that within the Catholic Church this attitude of “shutting oneselves off from the chaos” is being associated with Pope Benedict XVI. It is complemented by a Francis option of openness named after his successor.

>>Christianity is a mainstay of western civilisation but equally western civilisation is a mainstay of Christianity. It’s unclear to me that either can long survive without the other. <<

Certainly, Christianity is in decline in what can be called the (political) West but not necessarily so in e.g. Africa, China, Russia etc. For me personally, the question of Christianity surviving without western civilisation can be modelled by the question of mathematics, especially analysis (calculus) that was the mainstay of newtonian physics, surviving physics’s extension "without Newton" into more general gravitation and quantum theories.

That, of course does not answer necessarily in the affirmative your question about Christianity’s survival outside of western civilisation.

Dear Jardine,

a)

For something to be called "rational", it must be derived from thought, not just any thought, but straight, sane and logical thought. Axioms however, are not derived - or they wouldn't be axioms, they would be theorems. While theorems can be rational, all theorems are ultimately constructed on the quicksands of irrational axioms.

b)

For an ethical system to be rational, it must be derived from theorems and axioms concerning good and evil, thus include good and evil as its building blocks, but where could those be derived from? Not from nature anyway.

I have no problem to accept irrational definitions of "good", such as from the biblical Psalm: "It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High", but if you insist to limit your ethics to rational sources, then where will you obtain "good" and "evil" from?

c)

Objections to "man acts" could come from several directions:

1) It's not the man, but some part(s) of the man which act.
2) Only conscious entities can act, but "man" is just a body.
3) No action actually ever takes place, it only seems so.
3a) All actions have already taken place, just your consciousness travels along the time-dimension.
4) We're rarely ever fully conscious: automatic acts do not count.
5) All action is deterministic.

---

Another example?

- Husband comes home drunk, obviously not realising how much he drank and asks his wife to go the bar and argue with the barman that he was charged too much and should be refunded half his money. The wife responds: "But you know that I cannot argue, darling".

---

«the Invisible Pink Unicorn or the Magic Flying Teapot acts. It has no real explaining power, and I don’t see how you can say it’s rational or quite convincing.»

As for "rational", I never claimed that it is.
What I claim is that nobody's axioms are rational, including this, mine and yours.

As for "convincing", can over a billion people be convinced, yet you don't see that it is convincing?

Posted by mhaze, Wednesday, 29 March 2017 10:49:03 AM Page 11

"Certainly we have more than a few examples where otherwise western socities have sidelined or rejected Christianity, and the results haven't been pretty."

Indeed, when seen as "result" the dreadful visitations wrought upon heretics and apostates have been at the hands of the most pious of christians. That the christian actions were historically "unpretty" is a gross understatement.
If you were referring to those states who chose to develop a communist "Utopia", exemplified by Russia and China, if you maintain that the atheism attributed to these nations is responsible for your "unprettyness" then historically you haven't a leg to stand on.
Atheism, by its very nature as a withholding or rejection of belief, could never be a rallying cry for any government.
Demonstrably, it was never used at any time in Russian or Chinese history because it had so little political influence in government at all levels. Wars, famines, purges and other catastrophes were a consequence of human agency with much more pervasive, ignoble and mundane reasons in mind, not the least of which were messianic megalomania, jealously guarded power, perceived economic/political necessity, uncritical adherence to political doctrine and dogma,
Christianity had been at the seat of privilege throughout the West. It made and unmade kings, it gave legitimacy to aristocracy, it owned vast swathes of agricultural lands and estates, it extolled ignorance and poverty as highest virtue yet flaunted obscene wealth. All this, thousands of years of privilege, was under threat from communism which was not a religious movement but a political and economic one and so, to retain the allegiance of its vast flock, christianity declared and confirmed communism to be godless.
I am neither praising nor defending any particular politico-economic system of government. History as I have presented it is as it is. To contest it here can arise only from an imperative to pervert it

mhaze,

In what way is Western civilisation in decline, and how exactly does the decline of Christianity fuel such a decline?

If you mean what I think you mean, then I can assure you that virtually every sociologist disagrees with you.

It sounds to me that not only are you mistaking correlation for causation, but you are mistaking a negative correlation for a positive one.

As societal health in Western countries continues to improve, Christianity declines. However, Christianity's decline is not the main cause of our improving societal health. It is more a symptom of a third factor driving the inverse correlation: education.

By Greg Clarke - posted Friday, 24 March 2017 [last para]

"China, Korea, many African nations and much of South America are all realising this. Europe is starting to see what it has lost. Australia is already, constitutionally speaking, "humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God". Can we bring it Lazarus-like back to life into public discourse, without fear or prejudice?"

It's always the way, isn't it?

Just so long as your own fear and prejudice prevails.

Return to addressing the flock, you're not cut out for the soap box.

As the skeptic and author, Johnathan Swift, wrote: "You can't reason someone out of something they weren't reasoned into."

And as M.L.King jr wrote: "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

Pogi,

>>History as I have presented it is as it is.<<

What you have presented is an outsider’s view of what the Communist system was about. Or am I wrong? How many years did you spend in a Communist country?

I grew up in a Stalinist country and I can assure you that for us, children, it was not some abstract social theory construct of Marx and Lenin that we were taught (that came later) but first of all atheism, i.e. insistence that there was no God, in spite of what our parents would tell us.

Nevertheless, I am aware that there are atheists who insist Communism was not about atheism “by its very nature” (although Communists proudly referred to themselves as atheists). The same as, until recently, there were Christians who insisted “the dreadful visitations wrought upon heretics and apostates” were not about genuine Christianity (although the perpetrators proudly referred to themselves as Christians).

George,

It doesn’t matter one iota who insists what. Nor does it matter to what extent communists saw atheism as a defining tenet of communism. What matters is that there is nothing within atheism to support what the communists did. That’s the difference between atheism and religion, and the atrocities done in the name of each.

Your comparison is fallacious.

Further problems for your comparison is the fact that atheism is not a worldview or a belief system. Even in its stronger forms, atheism is merely a rejection of religious claims as unsupported by the evidence. Atheism neither says nor implies anything with regards to how or whether or not one should further act on that position. This is one of virtues of atheism over dogma.

You are again falsely equating atheism with religion by attempting to burden atheism with some of the actions of atheists in the same way that Christianity legitimately bears the burden of some of the actions of Christians. This is not possible for the reasons stated above.

The sceptic never has a cross to bear.

Posted by George, Friday, 31 March 2017 8:37:45 AM page 13

"...we were taught (that came later) but first of all atheism, i.e. insistence that there was no God, in spite of what our parents would tell us."
While I do appreciate your experience, your attempt to confound my argument is ineffective. So the communist education system was turning out atheists....? I applaud their commitment to the scientific method and its employment in a search for truth. You give no evidence of being intellectually harmed by it.

AJ Philips has presented an excellent refutation of any attempt to conflate the position of atheism vis a vis christianity in this argument so I won't occupy further space with an unnecessary refutation of my own.

I hope mhaze takes note and realises the futility of twisting history to suit religious purpose. The practice is prevalent and ubiquitous in christian argument. It is dishonest.

Yuyutsu

“As for "convincing", can over a billion people be convinced, yet you don't see that it is convincing?”

No, I can’t. Certainly the fact that many people believe something, is not, of itself, a proof of its rationality.

Just because theorems must be rational, doesn’t mean that axioms cannot be; and I don’t think you’ve given any reason why axioms cannot be rational.

Indeed we would expect self-evident propositions to be make logical sense, for the same reason we expect illogical propositions not to be self-evident.

If we think about common examples of axioms, for example “All men are mortal” or “All swans are white”, I think they are rational, given what is common knowledge about human life (everyone dies eventually), and given what was common knowledge about swans at the time when that statement about swans was considered self-evident, before black swans were discovered LOL.

As for the woman who argued that she cannot argue, I concede that is a valid example against me.

“but if you insist to limit your ethics to rational sources, then where will you obtain "good" and "evil" from?”

I’m going to argue that certain ethical norms are necessarily implied in the fact of argumentation itself.

Rationality is always about one thing *in relation to another*. The ‘ratio’ part especially refers to relation in certain proportions. That’s why mathematics is, par excellence, the domain of rationality: all the real-world and qualitative differences of things are abstracted away, and we are left dealing with the pure ratios and proportions in relation to one another. Rationality in effect means that we can definitely establish that certain propositions are not correct; and gives us the possibility of objective validation and confirmation – even if only as to errors - which is why rationality is so valuable. Results matter. (And they matter for the same reason that ethics and economics and political economy matter – because of the physical scarcity of resources.)

We may arrive at our belief in axioms because of some intuition or non-rational factor. But that doesn’t mean that they *cannot* be rational.

(cont.)

If it were true that axioms cannot be rational, then there would be no necessary truth to them, because there would be no necessary relation of one thing to another, which is what rationality is all about. So even if we derived logically correct theorems from initially irrational and erroneous axioms, that logical validity of the theorem could not save the conclusions from being ultimately unsound as ‘garbage-in, garbage-out’. And there would be no way to know that the axioms are not erroneous, because in the absence of rationality, how do you establish any ‘ratio’, any necessary relation or correct proportion of one thing to another, within the sense of the axiom itself? The whole project would necessarily become a-rational; worse: it’s apparent rationality would be only illusory.

It amounts to saying that rationality could not exist in any practical application.

Therefore I assert that “man acts” is self-evident; axiomatic; and that it is rational because it asserts a definite relation between man and his actions: namely, that human action is purposeful behaviour.

I don’t see how any of your objections negative that

AJ,

>>Your comparison is fallacious.<<

I could have expected your reaction, therefore I did not address this account of my experience to you. Most of what you wrote is irrelevant to my experience, but I have to accept your apparent point that we are all “false” and “fallacious” who see things differently, and have life experiences, different from yours.

Pogi,

>>I applaud their (the Stalinists’) commitment to the scientific method and its employment in a search for truth.<<

I do not think this deserves a dignified response from me. [I do not think you would react to a holocaust surviver’s personal experience by “You give no evidence of having been gassed”. (which certainly does not mean that what I went through under the Stalinist atheists was even slightly comparable with what a Jew had to go through under the Nazi.]

–––––––––––––––––

There are Christians whose Christian world view has degenerated into an ideology. And - as we have seen also on this thread - there are atheists whose atheist world view has degenerated into an ideology. In both cases it is futile to try to argue with them.

Hi George & Pogi,

Every ideological trend, including all the various aspects of the Enlightenment, can go off the rails and be taken to dreadful extremes: the notion that everything could be reduced to sciences 'evolved' into both Bolshevism and Nazism in their slightly different ways, for example.

Yes, our values have broadly been developed from Judeo-Graeco-Christian basic principles, often in opposition to them - that's precisely how Marx would have looked at it, in terms of Aristotle's thesis - antithesis - synthesis, but even that can be taken to impermissible extremes, particularly if someone gets the 'antithesis' bit slightly wrong, and then of course draws the wrong conclusions about 'synthesis'. But the 'rule' is still useful as a broad guide.

If one looks at the Enlightenment as a long road with many turn-offs and dead-ends, something forged out of both continuity with and reaction against its orthodoxies, then you realise that what Isaiah Berlin called the 'pursuit of the ideal' is both never-ending and booby-trapped. Even Marx went well off the rails given that his 'dictatorship of the proletariat' would have required (and did require) the extinction of the rule of law (in favour of pragmatic exigencies), and certainly would not have allowed standard, enlightenment-oriented freedoms, or equality before the law (not of all classes, for example).

Western life is thus based on a set of principles based on severely-tested Enlightenment experiences, which in turn are what have survived, or been derived from, the struggles within and against those Judeo-Graeco-Christian foundations. They're pretty knocked-about, and are constantly under threat from both Right and Left, sometimes both simultaneously, as is happening now.

But 'if you know of a better hole, go to it', as the old cartoon put it.

Joe

George,

A more appropriate word to describe what I did would be “respond”. By referring to my response as a “reaction”, your words imply that my response was emotionally-driven rather than rationally thought through.

<<I could have expected your reaction, …>>

If you could expect it, then why didn’t you account for it in your response to Pogi? We HAVE discussed this before, after all.

<<… therefore I did not address this account of my experience to you.>>

I would have thought that the reason for that was because you were responding to what Pogi said. Are you suggesting that you did consider addressing your post to me as well, but then decided not to because you knew I could point to the flaw in your logic?

<<Most of what you wrote is irrelevant to my experience, …>>

Well, that depends on what point it was that you were using your experience to make. The point you were making was that atheism played a central role in, or was a core tenet of, the communist ideology that you grew up with.

Which is fine.

But then you followed that up by falsely equating atheism with religion. To which I then replied by pointing out that it does not matter who insists what. What matters is that, unlike religion, there is nothing within atheism to support what atheists do beyond not believing in a god.

So what I said was absolutely relevant.

<<… but I have to accept your apparent point that we are all “false” and “fallacious” who see things differently, and have life experiences, different from yours.>>

Whether or not one agrees with me is not the determinant of fallaciousness. One’s line of reasoning is what determines that.

<<There are Christians whose Christian world view has degenerated into an ideology. And … there are atheists whose atheist world view has degenerated into an ideology.>>

The difference being, of course, that there is nothing within atheism to support the ideology that one’s atheism may degenerate into, because atheism has no doctrine.

There’s no need to be rude, by the way.

Posted by George, Saturday, 1 April 2017 10:21:40 AM page 14.

"I do not think this deserves a dignified response from me. [I do not think you would react to a holocaust surviver’s personal experience by “You give no evidence of having been gassed.”"

Indeed, I would not. The reason why is a brutal truth that,imho, you should have realised before you took irrational offence. No person who entered a gas chamber survived to relate the experience. That you equate any assault on your intellectual commitment with the most horrible agonies and bowel-loosening fear suffered by those poor inmates is more a measure of your narcissism than it is a legitimate criticism of me.
When I wrote: "I applaud their commitment to the scientific method and its employment in a search for truth. You give no evidence of being intellectually harmed by it." I had presumed that any religious faith you may have espoused had survived the torment of communist dogma and you seem to have suffered no permanent impairment. If my presumption was incorrect then allow me to congratulate you on hiding the affects so well.
In any case, your personal and anecdotal experience has barely a peripheral relevance to the main points I was arguing.
You may regard this as a dignified response and thoroughly deserved.

Posted by mhaze, Wednesday, 29 March 2017 10:49:35 AM page 12

"That the Bible offers some cover for slavery is certainly true. It was after all written in periods when slavery was ubiquitous and unquestioned."

This is a sleight of hand of unmeasurable smugness. Without going into details, the bible provides splendid detail, not only on slavery and who one can enslave but also their treatment, emancipation and their wives and children. The bible pronounces at length on unruly children, on the uncleanliness of women, on women as wives, in society and in places of worship and a host of other unpleasant and truly nasty things.

Did the christian god dictate the bible or not? Is it his inerrant word in entirety or not? Is that word eternal and unchanging or not?

The enquiring reader does not need malice to read and understand what is clearly recorded in the bible. Such a reader may ask questions as to the veracity of pronouncements from learned biblical scholars, again without malicious intent.

"All those 'rights' which we think of as being vital are western in origin and developed in socities based on Christian tenets."

Freedom of religious adherence? There are thousands upon thousands of "heretics" who would disagree quite vehemently. In England alone, hundreds and hundreds of catholics burnt by Elizabeth 1. Her catholic sister Mary 1 burnt as many protestants
Freedom of speech? Ask that of the English christians burned at the stake for owning or reading the bible in their own language and preaching thus.

It may be pertinent here to raise the issue of the Golden Rule, examples of which are found in philosophical and religious texts far older than christianity.

What of all those sincerely pious christians who, prior to the abolition of slavery, genuinely believed that slavery was approved of by the christian god? Are they condemned for honest error in believing the word of their god?

If you need to preface your dislike of criticism of religious faith by imputing base motives to the critic you've lost before you begin.

Loudmouth,

Thanks for the interesting post.

>> in terms of Aristotle's thesis - antithesis - synthesis <<

As I remember, Aristotle, and the old Greeks in general, are associated with the term dialectics which is more or less a debate. On the other hand the thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectical method (of arriving at the “truth” of dialectical materialism) was used by Marx (and Stalin) who referred it to GWF Hegel although it was Johann Fichte who actually first used the scheme. It is a useful thought pattern even for those whose personal philosophy is not Marxist or Hegelian. You are right that the choice of antithesis determines the possible outcome of synthesis.

I take your last paragraph as saying Enlightenment was a correction of some aspects of “Judeo-Graeco-Christian foundations” of the West. I agree, although we might differ on what aspects needed a correction, hence an antithesis leading to a viable synthesis.

AL,
I could continue by nitpicking your nitpickings but as I wrote above, what is the point?

Pogi,

Thanks for illustrating why your personal attacks and insults do not deserve a dignified response.

George,

I am not “nitpicking”. To “nitpick” means to deal with details that are inconsequential, and the flaw in your logic that I have pointed to is not inconsequential. It is, in fact, so fundamental to your claim that it discredits it entirely, and that deserves a response even if that response is silence. What it does not deserve, however, is an uncouth dismissal that demonstrates no attempt to take the point, or the person who made it, seriously.

<<I could continue by nitpicking your nitpickings but as I wrote above, what is the point?>>

There is, by definition, never a point in nitpicking. Nor have I asked you to do such a thing, and to suggest otherwise is rude and offensive. A response that deals with the substance of what I have said would be far more preferable.

Thank you.

AJ

I thank you too.

I take it then, George, that you cannot defend your claim? Maybe another time then?

--

Hmmm. It doesn’t look like mhaze will be back. If it was all so axiomatic, then why do experts, who argue in favour Christianity’s allegedly vital role in the rise of Western civilisation, feel the need to argue for it in the first place?

‘Everything is what it is, isn’t what it isn’t, and nothing is neither or both.’

Now THAT is an axiomatic statement: the foundational laws on which we (ultimately) base all logic. Not some tenuous, non-descript causal link between Christianity and Western civilisation.

Christianity’s role in the rise of Western civilisation is only “axiomatic” to the extent that it had to play a role in some form or another because nothing exists in a vacuum. Just what exactly it did, to what extent, and how it did it, is highly debatable.

One example of a dubious appeal to Christianity’s influence is the claim that it provided us with universities. It didn’t. Universities evolved as purely academic institutions from the old Trade Guilds. The Catholic Church eventually hijacked the universities for political reasons and promptly limited their research to approved courses only.

In order to reliably credit Christianity for anything, one would need to demonstrate how an element of Christian doctrine necessarily results in that thing. Even if one could do that, however, it still could only ever be put down to dumb luck until the claim to divine (i.e. omniscient) authorship could be demonstrated.

From my observations, and speaking for myself as a former Christian, the dubious links between Christianity and all that is good are proffered, ultimately, as a round-about way of suggesting that there is truth in its more fantastical claims. When atheists make this claim, it is often influenced by nationalism. In a post-9/11 world, Islamophobia has become yet another motivation, as it allows us to separate ourselves further from the Islamic-other in the same way the US separated themselves from those godless communists in the ‘50s by unconstitutionally inserting “In God We Trust” into every imaginable corner.

AJ

Interesting.

I thought universities originated as places specifically to study the crusades-re-discovered ancient classics, and particularly Justinian's Institutes?

Anyway, even if all the claims of the Christians were conceded, it still begs the question why the same benefits could not have been achieved directly by recourse to reason, and not indirectly by way of god-fables.

"When atheists make this claim, it is often influenced by nationalism."

"In a post-9/11 world, Islamophobia has become yet another motivation"

Motivation for what?

When atheists make what claim? ""the dubious links between Christianity and all that is good"? And what's "it" in your sentence? I'm not understanding you there

In replying to my post where I referred to "otherwise western societies have sidelined or rejected Christianity" POGI decided (somehow) that I was probably referring to places like Russia and China. Now I don't care how historically illiterate you might be, it’s mindboggling to think of China as a western state that rejected Christianity. But to be fair to poor POGI, it was more a case of him feeling the need to defend atheistic states, despite claiming to not be defending anyone in particular.
To do so, he trots out the usual tropes to explain why the church opposed communism, being its claimed need to defend its property and privilege. Quite what privilege and property the western church had in Russia and/or China to defend is left unexplained for obvious reasons. He then launches into an entirely fruitless but revealing attempt to educate me about how atheism wasn’t a factor in the misery of the regimes he is/isn’t defending. Since I hadn’t mentioned atheism, the segue seemed elusive.

So to help POGI, I was thinking not of China but of, primarily, Stalinist Russia, 1930’s Germany and the early French revolution as examples of what happens when western societies seek to reject Christianity as a foundation stone of society. The point about all of these regimes was that they sought to provide their subjects with a new purpose to the great societal project ; eg the perfection of man, the victory and pre-eminence of the Volk and the victory of virtue, respectively. Clearly it was in the interests of such societies to defeat completing world-views and the best way to do that is to suppress them. Christianity, being the most prominent competing philosophy was thus rejected and the results need not be covered here. The Christianity fought back and won seems to irk POGI.

Perhaps it’d be worthwhile to note here that I’m not a Christian.

/cont

/cont
I simply note its importance to western civilisation and note that when it is removed the consequences aren’t good for that society. I don’t dispute that it is possible to conceive of a society that is tolerant, peaceful and irreligious. It’s just that no such society has ever existed and in the long history of civilisations world-wide there is good reason why religion was always at the forefront of their existence. It may be that there were societies in those 7000 years that didn’t have religion as a cornerstone, but we don’t know of them because they didn’t succeed and/or survive.

POGI and AJ seek to disparage Christianity by constantly refer back to the evil done in its name. I don’t dispute any of that but merely point out that in the assessment of world civilisations the western version has been no worse than any other and, usually a whole lot better than most. To my point that it was to our credit that the first and only society to reject slavery was western, POGI meekly demands that we attack Christianity for what it said about slavery 2500 years ago. I’m much more concerned about what it said 200 years ago since this is a discussion about the now, not the then.
Western civilisation, begun in the plains and fora of Hellas all those years ago, has been, over the later part of its history, a boon to mankind and an example to all. It wasn’t/isn’t perfect and it doesn’t always live up to its own standards. Nonetheless it has provided the world with examples of how to create tolerant, free and successful societies. It has defeated slavery, liberated women from their own domestic slavery, and raised even the lowest of its members to a standard of living that would be the envy of the richest of men from prior periods. Its science has defeated hunger, and many diseases and doubled life-spans. Was that down to Christianity?..No. But Christianity is an integral part of the mix that made all that possible.

AJ doubts that western civilisation is in decline, based upon the views of “virtually every sociologist”.

Oh good, a consensus of sociologists! Are they the same sociologists who led AJ down the garden path concerning the origin and longevity of the traditional family?

Western civilisation is in decline as a society that no longer recognises its virtue and has no confidence or memory of its achievements. We are no longer prepared to assert the supremacy (for us) of our civilisation but instead seek to disparage our society for its failures while excusing all others for their (greater) failures.


Being so good for so long, we’ve forgotten how we got here and can’t see how easily it might be lost. We are no longer prepared to defend our civilisation and, instead of boldly defending its virtues, try to demur to those who attack its faults.

The society has lost its confidence and sees only black clouds in its future. People, not seeing a future for the society nor a need to defend it, cease to provide its next generations. The decline of western birth rates is not just a result of economics, it’s a statement that people don’t see a good future.

Liberty is under attack throughout. Freedom of speech, once a non-negotiable freedom, is now negotiated. Dark whispers are advanced that maybe people shouldn't be free to speak even in their own house to their own family. We have lost pride in our history and teach our young only to be ashamed of it. (We abolished slavery and can only assert it wasn’t done fast enough). Our universities, once the lifeblood of innovation and new thinking, are mired in political correct warfare.

Its not surprising that many don’t see the decline, because they didn’t recognise the summit.

Of course, the decline can be arrested and I hold some hope that we may be seeing some of that with recent elections and the way the people have instinctively reacted to things like the unopposed invasion of Europe by an alien culture. But we’ve lost much and have much to regain.

Dear Jardine,

If over a billion people are convinced, then whatever convinced them is convincing. Indeed, it may not be rational - but who said that people are rational?

Axioms are not rational because, by definition, they're not derived, whereas rationality means deriving, using correct logic, new conclusions from existing ideas (axioms and/or theorems).

Mathematicians never argue the truth of an axiom: there are no "erroneous axioms" as such, only contradicting axioms which don't fit with each other.

As for "self evident", for millennia it was considered self-evident that the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it. We know that both our sense-organs and our brains are far from perfect (take Fata-Morgana for exapmle). Believing in what our senses and mind are telling us, is thus irrational. Now I don't consider it wrong/inferior, but you seem to [consider it wrong/inferior].

Whether we believe in our senses, in an astronomy book or in scripture, it's all irrational. The classical astronomy book may contain lots of rational conclusions, but it too relies on irrational assumptions (for example that light travels in straight lines, this was refuted by Einstein). Moreover, unless you used a telescope yourself and repeated Kepler's observations and calculations in person, then you act out of faith in Kepler and others. That too is irrational (but not wrong).

Rather than discard it all as garbage (in/out), one can still speak of rationality in relative terms and it makes useful sense among people who accept the same axioms.

A common mistake, is to assume that others accept the same axioms as yourself. One of the axioms often considered a foundation of Western ethics, is that living is good and death is bad. However, if you trace that axiom, it comes down to the brainwashing dictates of our genes. Genes are programmed to survive, but believing them as if their "interests" are also your interests, is irrational.

Even if "man acts" was true, it doesn't follow that actions are good, how more so if the real actor is not even man, but rather his genes.

Yuyutsu

According to that doctrine, any proposition, no matter how dubious or downright unhinged, could be called “convincing”.

“Axioms are not rational because, by definition, they're not derived, whereas rationality means deriving, using correct logic, new conclusions from existing ideas (axioms and/or theorems).

This doesn’t mean they *cannot* be rational, for
1. An axiom may be a "given", and not-derived in that sense, as the basis of the syllogism that is to follow. But that doesn’t mean an axiom cannot be rational in its own right. For example “all birds have feathers”. That’s rational and it involves deriving. It’s saying that there’s a definite relation between thing A and thing B. But that doesn’t mean it’s not an axiom.

If what you are saying were correct, then by the process of launching out on a process of reasoning, our first step would have to be to give ourselves up to pure intuition, and abandon rationality in the very foundation and core of the process.

2. I don’t see why axioms can’t be *both* intuited, or arrived at by non-rational process, and have a basis in reason.

3. If what you are saying were correct, there’d be no such thing as truth or reality. We would be in a fantasy land that reality is whatever anyone says it is, with any later limitations imposed by rationality, being purely subsidiary to the primacy of the original irrational proposition.

So I don’t think it’s right.

“Even if "man acts" was true…”

It is enough for me that you prove the truth of it either by having to perform a self-contradiction in order to deny it.

“ it doesn't follow that actions are good”

No it doesn’t; and I didn’t say it does.

But it does follow from the fact that man acts, that in arguing, he necessarily implies and admits certain ethical propositions.

AJ

>>I take it then, George, that you cannot defend your claim?<<

I do not know what claim you are talking about that needs defending. It was you who made the claim that I was “falsely equating atheism with religion” because I wrote something about different world views. It is like claiming that by writing something about white and black horses, one is EQUATING the COLOURS white and black.

I thought this was rather obvious so I preferred just to thank you off since we have been through this confusion many times.

Dear Jardine,

You can observe for yourself that people are irrational. Just watch their numerous addictions and the nonsensical activities that they perform and watch despite having a brain.

1. This example, "All birds have feathers", is obviously irrational because some birds have no feathers (if nothing else, you could catch a bird and pluck its feathers, it would still be a bird, or would it?). As an axiom it would be irrational, but as a common practical assumption, it is relatively more rational than many other statements. Abandoning rationality, rather than recognising its limitedness, would be a serious mistake.

2. Axioms are not "arrived at", but accepted as in "take it or leave it". Please distinguish between the reason(s) why an axiom is correct and the reason(s) (if any) that people choose to accept them.

3. The fact that the mind cannot arrive at the truth/reality through a rational process does not imply that there is no truth or reality. Nevertheless, reason can detect inconsistencies and often detect when other people's ideas are derived from axioms that are different than yours.

Take "man acts": In some systems of axioms this is a conclusion/theorem, in others it is an axiom, yet in others still, it is a contradiction. What Gödel discovered in his incompleteness-theorem, however, is that in most systems of axioms, "man acts" is neither of the above.

That ethical propositions follow from this axiom and/or theorem, is yet to be shown and I sincerely cannot see or believe how this can be done without introducing further axioms regarding the nature of good and/or evil.

Posted by George, Sunday, 2 April 2017 7:13:29 AM p15.

"Pogi, Thanks for illustrating why your personal attacks and insults do not deserve a dignified response."

Simple logic and reasonig leaves little room for a cogent reply. Thay's why you failed to provide one.

Nevertheless, you're welcome.

Yuyutsu

1.
“All birds have feathers” is rational in the sense that it posits a relation between A and B that is based in reason. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. Rational doesn’t mean true. And the fact that it’s untrue doesn’t automatically prove that it’s irrational. A syllogism can be logically valid but nevertheless factually false and logically unsound.

"All swans are white." Lots of things thought to be axioms, and rationally based, and factually true, turned out later to be axioms, and rationally based, and factually false.

Therefore it is not true that an axiom cannot be rational.

2.
Even if an axiom must be accepted on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, that doesn’t mean it can’t be rational, it doesn’t mean it can’t posit relations between x and y that have a basis in reason.

So all you have done is repeatedly asserted that an axiom cannot be rational, but have given no reason to prove it. All the reasons you have given simply resolve back to the assertion that it can't be done, when obviously, it is and can be done.

Therefore you have not provided any cogent reason why an axiom cannot be rational.

3. It means that as soon as one embarked on a rational process, the first thing one would have to do is abandon rationality by definition of an axiom, according to you.

“Take "man acts": In some systems of axioms this is a conclusion/theorem, in others it is an axiom, yet in others still, it is a contradiction.”

Then so far as it is both an axiom and a conclusion/theorem, it can be both an axiom and rational.

In what, pray, is it a contradiction?

“That ethical propositions follow from this axiom and/or theorem, is yet to be shown”

That’s because I haven’t attempted to show it, unless you are interested, and open to the possibility that it might be true. But if you aren’t, then there’s no point me showing you, is there?

Dear Jardine,

1. Correct: "rational" does not imply true (nor vice-versa).

When "All birds have feathers" is derived from thinking about earlier assumptions, then it is likely to be rational (whether true or otherwise), but not otherwise. These can co-exist because they're two separate instances of the same claim.

«Lots of things thought to be axioms, and rationally based [and X] turned out to be axioms and rationally based [and Y]... Therefore it is not true that an axiom cannot be rational".

Logically, this construct sounds as: "Lots of creatures thought to be blue flying fairies, turned out to be red flying fairies, therefore it is not true that fairies cannot fly.

2. An axiom is, by definition, primitive or underived. It's like an atom of thought as opposed to molecules of thought. If you break down any assertion down to its primitive building blocks, you get axioms. Any assertion that can still be broken down, is not an axiom. Assuming that a person can think only a finite number of thoughts per lifetime, it follows that any idea can be broken down into its constituent axioms.

3. «Then so far as it is both an axiom and a conclusion/theorem»

These would be different instances of the same claim. A tyre cannot be both a car's front-tyre and back-tyre, but two, practically identical tyres can be placed one in front, the other in the back.

«That’s because I haven’t attempted to show it, unless you are interested, and open to the possibility that it might be true. But if you aren’t, then there’s no point me showing you, is there?»

I have not doubt that you are capable of creating ethical systems.
And they may possibly even be true, in the sense of correctly predicting: "this act is good, it ought to be done; that act is bad, it ought to be avoided".

What I cannot believe to be possible, in order for the proposed system to be a system of ethics, is to do so without introducing any new axioms (or theorems) regarding the nature of good and evil.

Yuyutsu

1.
Isn’t that a contradiction?

Here:
“This example, "All birds have feathers", is obviously irrational because some birds have no feathers”
you seem to be saying that the proposition is irrational because factually false.

Then later you say: “"rational" does not imply true”.

Given ‘rational’ does not imply true, therefore it is not “obviously irrational” to say that ‘all birds have feathers’.

Therefore you have not established that, as an example of an axiom, it is irrational.

And even if you had, you would not have established that an axiom cannot be rational.

“When "All birds have feathers" is derived from thinking about earlier assumptions, then it is likely to be rational (whether true or otherwise), but not otherwise.”

Then aren’t you saying that an axiom can be rational in certain circumstances?

“Lots of things thought to be axioms, and rationally based [and X] turned out to be axioms and rationally based [and Y]”
Not sure what you’re getting at there.

“Logically, this construct sounds as: "Lots of creatures thought to be blue flying fairies, turned out to be red flying fairies, therefore it is not true that fairies cannot fly.”

No it doesn’t. People thought all swans were white, until they discovered black swans as well. This did not change the characteristics of the original swans (they didn’t go from being X to being Y).

Therefore you have not proved that an axiom cannot be rational.

And you have given no reason, that I can see, for saying that an axiom cannot be rational, other than repeatedly insisting that it cannot be *by definition*.

2.
“An axiom is, by definition, primitive or underived.”

No it ain’t.

Or at least, I have never seen that as part of the definition.

Here’s the definition I get from typing “axiom definition” into bing:
“a statement or proposition that is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true”
“a statement or proposition on which an abstractly defined structure is based”

That does not say or require that it cannot be rational.

Here’s another from dictionary.com:
“a self-evident truth that requires no proof.”

(cont.)

Requires no proof. It doesn’t say it cannot be proved or cannot be rational.

Concise Oxford Dictionary:
“established principle; … self-evident truth”.
The etymology is from Greek ‘axios’: worthy.

None of them say it cannot be rational or must be primitive or underived.

3.
“I have not doubt that you are capable of creating ethical systems.”

I’m claiming more than that: I can prove a rational ethics, without the need to introduce any new normative values.

“without introducing any new axioms (or theorems) regarding the nature of good and evil”

The new axioms or propositions that I introduce to prove my rational ethics, are subsidiary to and derived from, my original axiom.

However there’s no point discussing it, if you cannot accept that an axiom can be rational.

As for your objections to “man acts”:
“1. It's not the man, but some part(s) of the man which act.”

Okay apply that to 7 billion people.

Now. Which part(s)?

“4. We're rarely ever fully conscious: automatic acts do not count.”

Effectivelly conscious is enough.

“2. Only conscious entities can act, but "man" is just a body.”
“3. No action actually ever takes place, it only seems so.”
3a. All actions have already taken place, just your consciousness travels along the time-dimension.”
“5. All action is deterministic.”

Prove it.

I can’t really take those arguments seriously. I think they’re on a par with the magic sky-fairy arguments, and the “maybe the motions of planets in distant galaxies explain human society better than human action on this planet?” –type arguments. You’d have to work them out prove them. I think they’re just a diversion and distraction.

I think if cannot bring yourself to admit that an axiom can be rational, because of non-existent dictionary definitions; and cannot admit that man acts, even though you it's universally true that one has to act to deny it; we’d better leave the topic, on the basis that you have been unable to refute my remarkably fine and self-evident argument except by appeal to alleged invisible supernatural beings, and airy unproven abstract speculations.

Dear Jardine,

1.

I admit that my claim that {"All birds have feathers" (ABHF) is irrational because some birds have no feathers} was sloppy. What I meant, but omitted, was that the person claiming ABHF likely knew the facts but made logical errors, thus ABHF is irrational not due to falsity, but due to these errors. Yes, it is also possible that the person in question did not know certain facts, such as that it is possible to pluck a bird's feathers.

When ABHF is derived from thinking about earlier assumptions, that instance of ABHF is not an axiom. This does not preclude other people accepting ABHF as an axiom, but then their instance of ABHF is not rational.

«People thought all swans were white, until they discovered black swans as well.»

If people thought that all flying fairies were blue, until they discovered red ones as well, this would imply that fairies exist and can fly!

If people thought that all rational axioms were true, until they discovered that some were false, this would imply that rational axioms exist. However, that never occurred: people discovered rational statements that are false as well as axioms that are false, but never in fact discovered rational axioms that are false (or true).

2.

«“An axiom is, by definition, primitive or underived.”

No it ain’t.»

In mathematics, axioms are defined this way, as opposed to theorems.

'Rational' means "derived by reason".
'Axiom' by your dictionary is "self-evident".

How can anything be both self-evident and derived from other things?

Now I was using the precise mathematical concept of axiom, rather than the blurry colloquial. In mathematics, an axiom:
1) Need not reflect a material reality.
2) Cannot be proven, disproven or derived from other axioms.

(continued...)

(...continued)

Please tell me whether you agree that the number of thoughts that any person can entertain during their lifetime is finite, because if so, then it is easy to mathematically prove that every logical thought must be based solely on one or more non-rationally-based thoughts.

That which you consider self-evident, is usually indeed rational, but the typical reasons for considering it self-evident is that either your deriving it in the past from other things was subconscious; or that you meanwhile took it for granted and forgot how you originally derived it.

3.

«without the need to introduce any new normative values.»

Normative values are a social construct, thus they speak about society's values, rather than about good and evil. I agree that you could do without them.

«if you cannot accept that an axiom can be rational.»

Or a square triangle.

Now going as you ask through all the possible objections to "man acts" would be Sisyphean. Why should I prove them when I never claimed them to be true? Some objections are rational constructs, others are primitive axioms, but in any case they probably all rely on axioms that you do not accept. If "Man acts" was indeed both true and rational, then you could easily be able to dismantle them all.

«even though you it's universally true that one has to act to deny it»

Those very same classes of objections can just as well apply to the act of denial.

«on the basis that you have been unable to refute my remarkably fine and self-evident argument«

So far you have no argument, only a proposal to make one.

1.
“When ABHF is derived from thinking about earlier assumptions, that instance of ABHF is not an axiom. This does not preclude other people accepting ABHF as an axiom, but then their instance of ABHF is not rational.”

So does that mean you are saying that a proposition can be an axiom, in which case it case it cannot be rational, or it can be derived from other propositions, in which case it cannot be an axiom?

And what if it is both?

2.
It’s all turning on definitions.

I don’t see that the definition of axiom requires that it be irrational.
You say it does.
I cite definitions that show it is not required.
You say, without citing any authority, it is required in mathematics, and that rational means ‘derived by reason’.
I earlier cited a dictionary definition saying rational means ‘with a basis in reason’.
You say ‘How can anything be both self-evident and derived from other things?’
I say, I don’t see why it can’t be. But when I try to give an example from the real world, you say things like everything could be deterministic.

But also, earlier you objected against my attempt to make a proposition about the real world that I was using mathematical logic. When I asked what is the matter with that, you said mathematics is fine in its own right, but it’s in a world of its own, and doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about the real world.

So why isn’t it enough to dispose of your objection to say we’re not talking about mathematics, we’re talking about human action?

Also, can you refer us to definitions of axiom in mathematics that prove your point?
But even if you could, that’s mathematics.

“it is easy to mathematically prove that every logical thought must be based solely on one or more non-rationally-based thoughts”

Okay, please prove it in the premises.

3.
“Why should I prove them [possible objections to ‘man acts’] when I never claimed them to be true?”

Well do you concede it’s true, or not?

“If "Man acts" was indeed both true and rational, then you could easily be able to dismantle them all.”

Indeed.

So which remain undismantled?

“So far you have no argument, only a proposal to make one.”

Yes. Just imagine how good it will be.

Dear Jardine,

1.

Correct, except that the same proposition can be an axiom for one person and derived from other propositions for another (or even for the same person at different times). However, a proposition cannot be both derived and not-derived for the same person at the same time.

2.

For anything to be self-evident, it needs to seem to be true without reference to anything else, otherwise it would be evident by virtue of other things.

To say that we are talking about human action requires certain agreements on contentious metaphysical issues. What often happens in practical everyday life is that despite our disagreements we implicitly agree to disagree and speak in relative terms, based on axioms that we may not agree on. We could say for example: "[if indeed man acts then] if this human broke that window then the same human ought to pay for the damage", we just omit the [] part for the sake of peace. However, this discussion is not in the realm of practical everyday life.

Regarding mathematics, have a look in http://world.mathigon.org/Axioms_and_Proof and http://www.quora.com/Can-axioms-be-proven-in-mathematics

Specifically, Prof. Borgwardt explains:
{No, because then it would not be an axiom. The definition of axiom is a premise that is accepted as self-evident and serves as a basis for all proofs in a field. If an axiom seems unnecessarily complex, mathematicians try to prove it using the other axioms; if they manage to do it, it's not considered an axiom anymore.}

[continued...]

[...continued]

So based on the assumption that one can have only a finite number of thoughts, say 26, suppose you think Z: I ask you why do you consider Z to be so and you say, "because it follows from X and Y". Fine so Z is rational, but I further ask why do you consider X to be so? so you say "because it follows from U, V and W". OK, so X is also rational, but as I persist on asking about U, etc. eventually you would run out of letters, so finally you would have to admit that you accepted 'A' irrationally rather than on the basis of earlier thoughts. I could use mathematical induction to render this proof mathematically-formal, but then I would run out of my 350 words.

3.

"man acts" is true within some systems of axioms, but not in others.
Why you or me or anyone else chooses a particular system of axioms and not another - is irrational.

Having chosen your particular set of axioms, you would indeed have dismantled all objections, for yourself. This may make you happy, but it has no effect on others who chose different sets of axioms.

If you exclaim: "but their systems are irrational!", then you burst into an open door as I fully agree, but then your particular choice of axioms is just as irrational as anyone else's.

«Yes. Just imagine how good it will be.»

This is believable: quite possible, but not rational.

.

Dear Greg,

.

You posit:

« The Bible is a mainstay of Western life »

I think it would be more accurate to say that Christianity is a mainstay of Western life. The bible is simply an instrument of Christianity. It is an anthropology of religious literature that was collated by early Christian leaders as justification for their beliefs and served as a support for their teachings and the propagation of their religion.

The oldest known list of New Testament books, known as the Muratorian Fragment which the American biblical scholar, Bruce M. Metzger, refers to as “the canon of the New Testament”, dates from about 170 AD and was written by an unidentified author.

The majority of the New Testament was written by two people: Saul of Tarsus and his close associate (and probable disciple) Luke the physician, whom Saul had taken along with him as a legal expert on most of his missionary journeys.

The New Testament and Christianity were essentially the creation of one individual : Saul of Tarsus. But if it were not for Constantine, the Roman emperor, who assured its subsequent promotion and widespread adoption, it would probably have remained just another sect before disappearing like most other sects at the time.

Constantine established tolerance for Christianity by the edict of Milan in 313, personally converted to Christianity, elevated the sect to a religion with full powers and privileges and promulgated Christian laws. The state church of the Roman Empire was established on 27 February 380 with the Edict of Thessalonica, when Emperor Theodosius I made Nicene Christianity the Empire's sole authorized religion.

Saul had a long history of religious fanaticism. He participated in the stoning to death of the first Christian martyr, Etienne, then became a rabbi before having an illumination and converting to Christianity. He was a tent maker by profession.

His life was marked by physical violence, pain, illness and self-flagellation – to such an extent that he seemed to have masochistic tendencies, detesting himself and the human condition, while glorifying the virtues of obedience and submission.

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For Saul, religion appears to have been the sublimation of the death impulse which haunted him all his life. It obsessed him and consumed him. Nero put him out of his misery by decapitating him in Rome in the year 64.

His legacy, like all things human, is a mixed bag of good and bad.
That is true of religion generally.
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And, Greg, you conclude :

« Time may reveal that ignoring, belittling or opposing the Bible is a fruitless exercise for a society that values freedom, individual rights and social care. These things sprang from its very pages, and it is not at all clear that they would have emerged otherwise »

I don’t think one necessarily has to “ignore, belittle or oppose the Bible” in order to observe behavioural patterns throughout the animal kingdom attesting to shared values of “freedom, individual rights and social care”. I see no evidence among our fellow animals that any of these values have been acquired as a result of them “springing from its [the Bible’s] very pages”.

They must have acquired them using some other method.

Perhaps they were just smarter than us.

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