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> I'm curious to hear how you are making the jump from "empiricism and the scientific method are simply better at making predictions about the world" to derivin

by msla 6y ago

> I'm curious to hear how you are making the jump from "empiricism and the scientific method are simply better at making predictions about the world" to deriving any kind of moral order that instructs how you ought to act in this world. I'm curious to hear why you need an explicit moral order in your life at all. Imagine you didn't believe in any religion, if you happen to be religious now, and further imagine we were alone and nobody would know what you or I did after it was done. If I walked up to you and gave you a gun, would you shoot me? I'm pretty sure you wouldn't. My society is pretty sure you wouldn't. It has, after all, bet the existence of New York City on that proposition. NYC has a population of a bit over eight million. If even 0.1% of them were utterly amoral and violent, the city would collapse under the weight of eight thousand murderers. Extrapolate for Tokyo, London, Beijing, Singapore... humanity bets quite a lot on the notion that most people, when handed a way to commit a perfect murder, would not do so.

jacobush 6y ago
Sidenote but, amoral does not imply stupid. There are wolves among us.
bobthechef 6y ago
> I'm curious to hear why you need an explicit moral order in your life at all. >Imagine you didn't believe in any religion > would you shoot me? I'm pretty sure you wouldn't. You misunderstand morality and religion. Consider the following: 1. Religion is not morality nor is it the source of all moral knowledge. Actually, the problem with the word "religion" is that it's very difficult to define and its current usage is historically speaking relatively recent. I prefer to avoid using it because it seems to accomplish little else than stir up connotations, misconceptions, and confusion. It's much better to address individual truth claims and ask for justification. Religious claims are no different. You just have to know what methods of verification are appropriate to what kind of truth claim. Method, of course, follows apprehension of the real. Also, everyone has a religion in the sense of holding something as the highest good. The question if whether what you hold to be the highest good is the highest good. Failure to make the proper identification is disastrous, even if apparently so or immediately so. 2. What is an "explicit moral order"? There is a moral order in reality that we discover. We reason morally every time we make a decision and that moral reasoning draw from our knowledge of reality and the moral order within it. Now, Cartesian materialists will find this difficult to understand because for them, the world is just a pile of homogeneous dead crap arranged in various configurations (they can't explain the "illusion" that the world is otherwise because they've necessarily reduced the mind to meaningless motions of homogeneous dead crap we call a "brain" for some reason). In any case, we can come to know moral principles explicitly precisely because the moral order is real and not an arbitrarily imposed fiction. In our day to day affairs, we also engage in prudent reasoning that considers the various circumstances we find ourselves in. All of this involves reasoning about the good. 3. Why wouldn't someone shoot you? There must be motive and motive has moral meaning. Of course, it's also true that we live in a society heavily influenced by Christianity, so your example doesn't supply us with the kind of critical experiment you were hoping for.

by msla 6y ago

jacobush 6y ago

Sidenote but, amoral does not imply stupid. There are wolves among us.

bobthechef 6y ago

> I'm curious to hear why you need an explicit moral order in your life at all. >Imagine you didn't believe in any religion > would you shoot me? I'm pretty sure you wouldn't. You misunderstand morality and religion. Consider the following: 1. Religion is not morality nor is it the source of all moral knowledge. Actually, the problem with the word "religion" is that it's very difficult to define and its current usage is historically speaking relatively recent. I prefer to avoid using it because it seems to accomplish little else than stir up connotations, misconceptions, and confusion. It's much better to address individual truth claims and ask for justification. Religious claims are no different. You just have to know what methods of verification are appropriate to what kind of truth claim. Method, of course, follows apprehension of the real. Also, everyone has a religion in the sense of holding something as the highest good. The question if whether what you hold to be the highest good is the highest good. Failure to make the proper identification is disastrous, even if apparently so or immediately so. 2. What is an "explicit moral order"? There is a moral order in reality that we discover. We reason morally every time we make a decision and that moral reasoning draw from our knowledge of reality and the moral order within it. Now, Cartesian materialists will find this difficult to understand because for them, the world is just a pile of homogeneous dead crap arranged in various configurations (they can't explain the "illusion" that the world is otherwise because they've necessarily reduced the mind to meaningless motions of homogeneous dead crap we call a "brain" for some reason). In any case, we can come to know moral principles explicitly precisely because the moral order is real and not an arbitrarily imposed fiction. In our day to day affairs, we also engage in prudent reasoning that considers the various circumstances we find ourselves in. All of this involves reasoning about the good. 3. Why wouldn't someone shoot you? There must be motive and motive has moral meaning. Of course, it's also true that we live in a society heavily influenced by Christianity, so your example doesn't supply us with the kind of critical experiment you were hoping for.