Posts Tagged ‘ Hitler ’
or why Christian apologetic arguments that use Hitler as an example are self refuting and circular.
I’ve written about this before here and here but I think this video does a better job of showing how the argument of biblical morality is circular and dangerous.
Enjoy. Please feel free to comment whether you think this is correct or not. The circular biblical morality discussion needs to be out in the open more often.
I have to tell you that I like the cliche headline grabbing way this title hangs on the top there 😉
It’s not about evil babies no matter how much I would like to write that article. I just read a post at selfawarepatters.com dealing with the innateness of morality in babies. Yes, human babies. The cute helpless mini-alien looking things that people get at hospitals.
Hurt mommy and I’ll kill you!
I know that everyone has the cutest and smartest baby in the(ir) world. I’m not here to argue that. The post in question discusses whether morality is innate in humans and provides some good references to follow. I’m not going to critique the post but I wanted to mention it because it is the inspiration for this one.
One of the things that I believe people forget or overlook when discussing a topic like this is the mechanisms on which morality functions. I don’t mean philosophical things, rather I mean the neurons and brains and stuff in our heads where all the decisions on a moral scale are made. I think that our brains have a lot to do with morality as we perceive it.
We can spend a few minutes on the Internet and find examples of many mammals showing moral actions, actions of empathy, and generally displaying what were previously thought to be human only actions. All you have to do for this is search for ‘animal saves’ and you’ll get plenty to look at. Clearly they are not limited to humans so it is fair to conclude that what makes us moral beings is probably more to do with our ancestors than some built-in moral mechanism or programming. Not one religion that I’m aware of teaches that animals are moral beings capable of moral action. PETA is not a religion despite what you might think.
Logically we should look at what humans and other mammals have in common. An ancestor! Genetic commonalities. Wait for it …. a brain.
Why would having a brain make you a moral species or a species that is wont to be moral? Another clue is that we find many of the animal stories mentioned above are about social animals or animals that generally are not loners. Ah, so a clue is that social mammals seem to generally exhibit moralistic behavior. Only one species reads holy texts or even seems to give a damn about morality, humans. We can rule out reading and holy texts and even discussing the idea of morality as being the cause.
Coming full circle, that would mean that we should be able to eliminate adulthood in humans as a requirement for moral thinking and action. It appears that all social mammals seem to have the ability for moral action and that includes humans. Nurture is out, so it must be that human babies have the ability for moral action as well whether they can demonstrate it or not. Hopefully this establishes a firm reason for thinking that humans are born with the ability to act in morally good ways. I don’t want to include the entire argument so for the sakes of this discussion let’s take as granted that morality is based on the law of reciprocity… the golden rule in its many forms. In adults this can be easily argued as a survival strategy and it even supports social group survival strategies. We can see this in other mammal species as well. Why would the law of reciprocity seem to be prevalent across the mammalian species?
In a general sense, the survival point on a scale between harm and no-harm is in the balance point. There will be times of giving and receiving harm and no-harm, but survival goes to those that maintain the balance more often. This can be reduced to a calculation, the kind you find on actuary tables. It’s not a heart warming calculation and it involves leaving the dead and wounded behind as often as not. In this grotesque calculation of survival we can see that over time, any no-harm that you can achieve will help in the fight against harm in order to maintain balance. It’s a calculation that your brain can do.
Social animals protect their in-group and self. This is demonstrably true. Evolution made sure of this because those that did not simply didn’t survive at a rate high enough for us to count them today.
In our complicated world of hairless apes, our brains have far more information than what will kill you and what is good to eat. The balance between harm and no-harm is far more complex now. We have to think and consider what is harm to self and harm to in-group and what is not. Morality is born of this equation for it is only the most complex set of equations to find balance, to find survival. Morality is innate _because_ we are social animals and it serves as a basis for survival for pre-modern humans, modern humans, and in fact all social mammals.
I don’t think that you’ll be able to find a moral act by either humans or any social mammal that can not be understood in this way.
Survival is innate. Morality is a survival strategy in its most basic expression.
When surviving becomes more complex, the expression of that survival strategy becomes more complex and can even be stretched to the point of ludicrous tensions.
Is it okay to murder Hitler?
Watch a child, I bet they would if they could.
Hurt mommy and I’ll kill you!
That is morality in it’s most raw form.
There are some things in this world that truly need no introduction nor accompaniment. What Melodysheep does is something that has struck a chord in me… from the first video I witnessed. You don’t simply watch them in my opinion.
So it is that I entreat you to experience this. Remember when and who gave this speech, what has happened since and the many petabytes of information that were not available then. We barely knew what air conditioning felt like, and nothing we consider modern was available to him. What strength can you take from this? The very ideas you yearn to see made real in the world have been dreamed of for longer than any of us wants to remember or even contemplate … for even in the contemplation we must admit that we have failed over and over again to achieve the ideals which we all want and think we stand for.
There is even more good news: NASA is building a warp drive! No, I’m not fucking kidding. Screw the flying car, I want Earth 2.0 in my life time!
Okay, maybe they won’t build it next week, but you have to admit this is cool! Science for the win.
Check this out
I guess I’m not the only one with this thought…. hmmmm
I was contacted by Neil Shenvi in part because I linked to his article regarding Objective Moral Values. He has esquired on my thoughts on his post. I had used it originally as an example of how the topic is treated in several basic ways. Neil makes a thoughtful case for the existence of objective morality. His comment and challenge to me can be found in the comments on my first post.
His is not a short post nor haphazardly written so I will attempt to give the reply at least as much care in return, in a point by point manner. Neil will probably think me a nihilist. I don’t claim the title. I only know what has come to make sense to me as I question what I’ve been told about the world and life. If you think I’m misrepresenting some ?-ists world view you are wrong. Here I represent only my world view. I’m not representing the atheist community, humanists, nihilists etc. I guess I’m a Z-ist. I don’t care to wear a label even though I understand how important they can be for conveying a lot of information quickly. Here we go….
In the first section Neil describes what he understands is the meaning of the second premise of the deductive form of ‘the moral argument‘. I don’t really have any problem with the definition of ‘objective’ as he describes it but there are a couple of nitpicks I’ll put forward as a premise to some of my later statements.
What we missed here is the definition of a ‘moral value’ so lets dive into that for a minute:
We might well then conclude that a value is some quality that is intrinsically desirable, or which is an end to itself.
The first major relativist philosopher was Protagoras (c.490 – c.420 BCE). His book Truth contains his most famous statement; “Humans are the measure of all things.” To measure something is to give it a value and Protagoras regarded all values – truth, good, beauty, even existence – as dependent upon the human observer. That is, the value of everything is relative to the observer. (Edit: forgot where I grabbed this statement from … mea culpa, but it is written well)
The moral relativist’s view matches up with a general definition of ‘value’ as we understand it. It is a quality of desirableness or worthiness of something as assigned by an observer, in as much as one can observe moral qualities. To be certain, the word value has many uses, and thus many contextual meanings. I’ve tried to stay focused on the context of morality here. I do not think that Neil is attempting to redefine ‘value’ in his post. That leaves us with: objective moral (subjective desired quality) going once again to the dictionaries we find that ‘moral’ is an adjective with the meaning of ‘relating to the principles of right and wrong in behavior. That might leave us with: objective principle of right/wrong behavior with a subjective desired quality. Objective and value are not words that fit well together. So lets just expand ‘moral value’ as a modifier of value: subjective desired quality. That leaves us with objective subjective desired quality. They don’t fit well that way either. I will state that the discussion is off to a bad start. We have a problem with definitions before the gun is fired. It troubles me but I think this is what Neil actually means: there is a subset of desired subjective qualities which are actually objective in nature. This is troubling for two reasons mainly. First, what tools do we have to separate subjective quality from objective quality? Second, if such a tool existed we would not be having this discussion. I believe that more aptly defines the framework for this discussion, so lets get on with it.
Neil’s first section: I. What are “objective moral values”?
Paragraph one jumps straight to Hitler. How awesome is that? Here he also discusses objective value as objective fact and uses some examples. Note that this is meant to be equal to the idea that 2+2=4 is an objective fact regardless of who does the addition, where they do it, or what they do it with. There is no contextual modifiers which will change this objective fact. Consequently we are now talking about an ‘objective subjective desired quality’ which is either always true or always false regardless of context. We can also note that ‘murder is evil’ is not such a thing. Context changes its evaluation. Murder is evil unless done in self defense, in which case it’s good unless you are defending yourself from police shooters because you robbed a bank. Murder is evil unless you are wanting steak for dinner. Context changes it. So we are looking for “objective subjective desired qualities” which do not change depending on context. Lets say ‘giving to charity is good’ and see how that pans out. Well, it is good unless you are giving away your rent money. Okay, context changes that. We begin to see the depth of the issue here because the only tools we have to judge with are subjective by their very nature. In paragraph 3 of section 1 Neil basically states that we don’t have any reliable tools to determine objective from subjective. I agree.
In paragraph 4 of section 1 Neil confirms that even if objective moral values do exist, they are not necessary for us to live our lives. We can be good without them, or choose to be bad even if we believe they exist. We both agree that if they do exist, they are not necessary for life or even for human happiness. At this point it would be easy to argue that it is difficult to then see what purpose such objective moral values would have. They are clearly superfluous to human existence if subjective values can over-ride them, or replace them. Please note that this is not practical for objective facts. We cannot replace 2+2=4 with something else at a whim or personal preference.If you are confused at this point, don’t worry. I don’t think there is any good understanding. Those claiming the existence of objective moral values don’t seem to make themselves clear on what they are, never mind if they exist.
On to section 2: II. Evidence that objective moral values exist
In this section Neil starts out by admitting that he will not prove the existence of objective moral values, but will instead attempt to show them more likely to exist than the evidence that shows them likely to not exist. This is a flee-flicker play. We do not have credible evidence for the existence of objective moral values, therefore those claiming that they exist bear the burden of proof. Neil himself admits this lack of credible evidence. I’m not responsible to prove they do not exist. I can only state my reasons for not believing his evidence that they do exist. If his evidence isn’t credible, then his claim fails. I do not have to do anything. The burden of proof is on the claimant.
Keeping these issues in mind, let’s look at the five pieces of evidence that objective moral values exist.
- The existence of objective moral values explains the near-universal existence of basic standards of morality, even those that disfavor personal or genetic benefit.
- The existence of objective moral values explains why those who explicitly deny the existence of objective morality still act as if objective morality exists
- The existence of objective moral values explains the nearly universal human intuition that certain things are objectively right or wrong.
- The existence of objective moral values explains why the majority of philosophers recognize the existence of objective moral facts.
- The existence of objective moral values explains why naturalists (e.g. Sam Harris ot Shelley Kagan) affirm the existence of objective moral facts, despite the problems inherent in grounding these facts in the natural world.
Oh, fun! Lets look at evidence #1 – The existence of objective moral values explains the near-universal existence of basic standards of morality, even those that disfavor personal or genetic benefit.
It doesn’t take super intelligence to observe that seemingly all cultures across the globe seem to adhere to a basic set of moral values. Neil expresses this with gusto but then goes on to talk about altruism as some special aspect of morality that is only human and is further special because it is found in all populations.
What puzzles me most is why –on this view– true altruism persists in the human race. Shouldn’t altruistic acts like self-sacrifice or adoption have been weeded out of the human population by natural selection eons ago? How could the pressures of natural selection have tuned the eye to detect single photons yet have failed to prevent people from rushing into burning buildings or diving into icy water to save others?
Well, clearly this is a question that many have asked or thought about. Neil seems unable to understand how evolution could have created such a situation. This also indicates that Neil is not arguing against evolution here. The evidence shows that all human populations and cultures are derived from a single human population and culture. It is not difficult to then understand that any useful and dependable value, tradition, action, or behavior would follow on to all other cultures and populations, being passed down from generation to generation without interruption. It befuddles me that altruism is such a difficult concept for Neil to understand. Defense of one’s ‘in-group’ does infer genetic self interest. Protecting your offspring is a biological imperative. It is easy to infer protecting the weak to ensure their survival. You should already know where I’m going with this. Protecting the weak is biologically programmed. The ‘accident’ part is transferring this from offspring to in-group members. Once that is done it’s easy to transfer it to other beings. From there we can now go to the Google: Lets see what the other animals on this planet have to say about altruism, shall we? Oh, there it is: Wild Animal Heroes! Altruistic behavior is not the sole purview of humans. This would give reason to hypothesize that such behavior is genetically derived via evolution.
Lets take Occam’s razor to this one. On the one hand we have an argument from ignorance and on the other we have a fact based process which shows evidence of producing this behavior in many populations derived from a much earlier one. Oh, wait for it… there is news about this. Scientists have discovered what might actually be the mechanism for passing on altruistic behaviors.
Lets look at evidence #2 – The existence of objective moral values explains why those who explicitly deny the existence of objective morality still act as if objective morality exists
Hold on, we started this discussion saying that objective moral values must be some subset of subjective moral values that are also objective, and that they are superfluous to human existence and happiness. That is to say that humans can live life as they do whether objective moral values exist or not, and they do live so. This point contradicts Neil’s earlier statements without reasonable justification. That many people choose to act a certain way does not mean they are compelled to do so. If it compelled them to do so, it should also compel all others to do so and this simply is not the case.This is not evidence. I don’t even think it qualifies as argument.
Lets look at evidence #3 – The existence of objective moral values explains the nearly universal human intuition that certain things are objectively right or wrong
Seriously? We covered this in evidence #1. Ok, we’ll do it again.
I have recently seen first-hand evidence of this fact in interacting with my two-and-a-half year old son. As parents, we have to teach him to share, to be kind, to be gentle, and to do what is good. Often, teaching him to do what is good is a difficult task. But he has not once asked me what I mean by “good”. Indeed, he takes it perfectly for granted that some things are objectively good and some things are objectively bad. He does not occasionally confuse “good” with “whatever Mommy and Daddy impose on me by force” or “what will eventually lead to my own benefit.”
The human brain is a decision making machine, taking in all available information, sensory data, and knowledge to make decisions which benefit the self. A child of 2.5 years has only two main sources of information and knowledge: self discovery and observation of those around them – normally only its parents. The child’s brain has not yet formed the neural pathways which could lead to questioning the truth or value of what the parents say. Another argument from ignorance. Childhood development and learning are well studied. The human mind progresses through steps to get to adult qualification. Neil’s supposition that a 2.5 year old child is equivalent to an adult brain is fallacious and misleading.
Another equally important point is that I can’t even begin to conceive of how a true moral relativist would raise a child. If a child asks his parent why he should not hit his sister, I find it hard to believe that the moral relativist would answer “Because of self-interest. If you hit her, then she might hit you back.” Nor would the parent say “Because I am bigger than you and will punish you if you disobey.” Even the most committed moral relativist will find himself answering “Hitting is wrong. Stealing is wrong. Love and generosity and kindness are good.” Now the moral relativist might console himself with the thought that he is merely introducing a fictional short-hand to be replaced with the bracing truth of moral relativism once the child is old enough to understand. But I find it extremely interesting that thinking in objective moral terms is nearly unavoidable for both children and parents.
The emphasis above is mine. I find it unthinkable that a parent might scold a child with threats from an invisible sky daddy to produce desired behaviors, or worse, resort to biblical child rearing techniques. In any case, “because I don’t want you to” or “it’s nicer to be kind” are better than “god doesn’t want you to do it” etc. Furthermore, neither child nor parent has to resort to thinking in objective moral terms. Remember, just a few short paragraphs ago we were in agreement that objective moral values are superfluous to human existence and happiness. They are also superfluous to child rearing. This evidence is neither evidence or credible argument. It was a non-starter.
Lets look at evidence #4 – The existence of objective moral values explains why the majority of philosophers recognize the existence of objective moral facts
This too is a fallacious argument. What constitutes a “majority of philosophers” ? Where is the score board? What does recognize mean in this case. If more than half of the US population believes in UFO’s does that mean they exist? That many people share a common value does not mean such a value is sourced from outside the human mind. Again, refer to my comments about evidence #1. Clearly evolution has a method to pass on biologically bound behaviors. Occam’s razor shreds this evidence #4 quite quickly as well. If the reader will remember, Occam’s razor is basically what Neil said was the test for the evidence to be believable. He did not mention Occam or the razor, but explained it in an equivalent manner, at least to my mind.
Lets look at evidence #5 – The existence of objective moral values explains why naturalists (e.g. Sam Harris ot Shelley Kagan) affirm the existence of objective moral facts, despite the problems inherent in grounding these facts in the natural world
Wow! Just because naturalists seem to agree with your hypothesis does not mean that they agree with your conclusion nor that your hypothesis is right. Another fallacious argument.
The conclusion:
Here Neil asks the reader to question all the ‘evidence’ provided and think about and determine which possibility is more probable for each of the five presented evidences.
What I’ve seen here is not evidence. It’s nothing but rhetoric and fallacious argument. There is nothing in Neil’s arguments that seems credible never mind it being enough to make me think that he might be right about objective subjective desirable qualities. Sam Harris is wrong too. There are no moral values which are always true or always false regardless of context. Find one of those and Neil might have something to work with. This is just wishful thinking as far as I can tell.
Further, even if someone agrees with Neil, this does not posit authority to assume his argument proves the existence of a god. Even if it did prove the existence of a god, it does not posit that the god it proves is the one Neil believes in. Even if it did posit that Neil’s deity existed, it does not posit what that deity says is moral. Even if I give Neil a pass on all five points, there is no link between the supposed objective moral values and his deity of choice, nor that his deity is responsible for them.
What Neil has presented in his post is just wishful thinking. It fails to get anywhere near his stated objective. In fact, such argument augments my list of reasons to further doubt such argument from others. One bad apple may not spoil the whole basket, but if you see the bad apple before choosing one to eat, you’ll move on to another basket for your food.
Every now and then I run across an article or post that offer an opinion that i personally feel is jaw droppingly stupid. One such article is a post by Richard Weikart about his work or more specifically the fall out from his studies and books. Faye Flam at http://www.philly.com attempts to take him to task, but I think she also missed the point.
I’ll use some context from both posts below but you should read both posts. Neither are very long.
The reason that I think this entire thing is jaw droppingly stupid is that Weikart is working on the false presumption that objective morality exists. Lets start with why some folk believe there is objective morality.
Anyone that ends up on the opposite side of a question from William Lane Craig is okay in my book. To be up front, I basically agree with TaylorX04. He manages to get to the point by asking at the 1:45 mark where is the evidence that objective moral values exist? That _IS_ the only argument here. Where is the evidence for objective morality?
Weikart writes:
Flam, however, tries to take a different approach. First, she seems to imply that since we don’t suppose that Galileo or Newton or Einstein should provide us with any moral guidance, neither should we expect it from Darwin. However, she (like many other Darwinists I’ve talked with) fails to make a crucial distinction here. Most scientists, including Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, did not ever claim to explain anything about morality. Einstein correctly rejected the idea that his theory of relativity had moral implications. On the other hand, Darwin devoted quite a few pages of Descent of Man to explaining the evolutionary origins of morality. Applying Darwinian insights to morality is not distorting the theory at all (as it would be for someone to draw moral implications from relativity theory). Rather, it is explicitly part and parcel of Darwin’s own theory of human evolution.
The use of ethical values in making judgments about the world around us and what actions we will take or not take do derive, at least in part, from the results of the evolutionary processes. Darwin, in his time, was not aware of the knowledge that we now have about biology, neurology, and many other bodies of knowledge which were at least partly based on his own work.We now have more information to work with. Using Darwin as the basis for criticism of current bodies of thought is often problematic.
The argument that there are objective moral values is not congruent with how we understand the world around us. We do not look at moral or ethical values in black and white terms. We see them in a wide range of variations. We rarely ever agree completely on how good or bad a thing or action is. Examples include:
It is in fact bizarre that anyone would even suggest that there are objective good and bad values. There is no other part of our lives where we make judgements about the world around us where we insist on objective values. We don’t have objective values for music, clothing, food or anything else where we use judgement about the world around us. That most of us seem to think Hitler was bad does not infer objective moral values. While you might find it objectionable, we do not require that people who like music that we do not be punished and it is incorrect in my opinion to, for example, want to punish people who do not hold the same moral values as we do. Those that believe Hitler was not wrong are not wrong to think so, though they may violate some other moral values in their actions. The point is that the differing views of moral value where Hitler or other such examples are concerned are all correct. There is no objective moral value to say what is right or wrong. To want someone to die is not the same thing as killing them. There is no need to have equal moral judgements on any given action. Was Hitler wrong? I think so, but you don’t have to agree with me. There is nothing that requires you to agree with me to be an ethical person. Is telling lies bad? Does this dress make my ass look fat? Is murder always bad? Do you eat meat? The Hitler problem imbues the argument with passion, but does not change the issue. What is true for the Hitler question is true for the ‘Is murder always wrong’ question.
Almost all of us believe that murder is good in some situations, but not all situations. It is not objectively wrong. Narrowing the question down to whether the murderous Hitler was right or wrong does not demonstrate objective moral values. The best it can do is show that most of us agree that Hitler was not good. This is far from establishing anything like objective moral values.
Your behavior and actions will determine how I personally view your moral value against my own moral value system, no matter what anyone else thinks of you. This is almost always true everywhere in the world, for all people.
Flam writes:
Weikart’s view that evolution’s proponents lack the moral grounds to criticize Hitler raises this question: Why should we hold evolution responsible for providing a complete moral framework? We don’t ask that of Galileo or Newton or Einstein. Weikert replies that evolution is different because various thinkers have applied it to morality.
This is a mis-step. Evolution can be applied to a great many topics. In fact evolution has some input on the question of why modern architecture is what it is today… in a 6 degrees kind of way. It is as it is because of human aesthetics, which is derived by neurological processes which were shaped in part by evolution. In the same way, evolution has helped shape morality among humans.
The premise that there is objective moral values is simply without evidence or proof. No matter what argument is used in favor of believing this, there is no evidence. Murder is not always bad. Giving to charities is not always good. Lies are not always bad… round and round. If we can not see moral or ethical values in a clear-cut black and white manner, then it is not a valid premise. To make it a valid premise requires evidence. There is none. Just like the lack of evidence for gods, in this case absence of evidence is evidence of absence. We can look at the many groups over time claiming objective morality and failing miserably to show it.
Is there objective moral values? I have never encountered credible evidence in support of it. I have encountered plenty of evidence which suggest there are no objective moral or ethical values. Here in the USA Christians will tell you that stoning gays to death is bad, yet their holy books says it is the moral thing to do… among other things they will tell you are bad.
The question of lesser and higher humans broached in the two linked posts is also not the issue that it is made out to be. Darwin’s ideas were misused by a lot of people and social darwinists. The argument is countered by positing that violent fundamentalists are not abusing their holy books ideas, though that is not a perfect analogy. Just look at dogs. They make friends with other dogs regardless of breed, size, color etc. Behavior drives their acceptance of one another. Evolution has driven humans to behave in various ways to survive, or rather in the process of surviving some humans passed on certain behavior traits.
The scientific method is not a set of moral values but is a method to discover the truth of the world around us. It neither defines nor requires objective moral values. If they existed the scientific method would find them. Likewise, if objective moral values existed critical thinking would show them to exist. That neither of these two methods have discovered credible evidence for objective moral values it is just jaw droppingly stupid to state that they do exist as a premise of any argument, unless you are presenting credible proof of the existence of objective moral values.
When we are morally good, it is because we ourselves choose those actions in accordance with our own value system. Our own version of being moral is different from other people’s version. If there were objective moral values, all religions would claim them, as would humanists and others because they would be self-evident. That many world views share some similar or common moral values does not prove there is objective moral values. The cognitive feedback called guilt occurs when we know we have not lived up to our own moral values system. We don’t all feel guilty in an objective way. The argument for objective moral values means that Christians should feel guilty for not stoning people who work on Sundays. Do they? There is no demonstrable credible evidence for the existence of objective moral values. To assert that there are is to be jaw droppingly stupid.
