Side comments on Euthyphro

[Puck_Mendelssohn]

These threads are always educational, though primarily in a cultural-anthropology sense. Evidently if we have de logic, de cargo will come!

[AlanFox]

@r_speir

And nonsense such as that loses the argument for you.

I think the argument of atheism being the null hypothesis is settled and irrefutable, as has been previously demonstrated.

[r_speir]

@AlanFox

I think the argument of atheism being the null hypothesis is settled and irrefutable, as has been previously demonstrated.

The existence of God is equally a null hypothesis and equally irrefutable.

[AlanFox]

@r_speir

The existence of God is equally a null hypothesis and equally irrefutable.

Can it be both? I guess so. I was making the point that babies start out as atheists. Irrefutable. Does the Christian God exist? Maybe but it cannot be demonstrated.

[r_speir]

@AlanFox

I guess so. I was making the point that babies start out as atheists. Irrefutable.

I just refuted this claim on the other thread where you originally made it. Babies are born in the image of God with a propensity to believe. Your claim is overthrown.

[thoughtful (Valerie (non-scientist))]

@Faizal_Ali

Someone telling somebody about himself does not make him moral, never mind the objective standard of morality.

You’re also perilously close to running aground on the Euthyphro. On what basis to we judge his “character and behaviour” as good?

@AlanFox

Now that is circular!

If God exists, on what basis are you able to tell Him whether he is moral or not? What are you comparing him to?

[AlanFox]

@thoughtful

If God exists, on what basis are you able to tell Him whether he is moral or not? What are you comparing him to?

It is my firm conviction that gods are a human invention. I struggle with the hypothetical “if God exists”.

[Faizal_Ali]

@r_speir

I know logic. Logic says you must prove that the existence of God is a more difficult position to hold philosophically than his non-existence. If you cannot prove it, then you are logically bound to prove his non-existence.

This is how @r_speir attempts to demonstrate that he knows logic.

You couldn’t make it up.

[AlanFox]

@r_speir

Babies are born in the image of God with a propensity to believe. Your claim is overthrown.

Of course it isn’t. Babies are born with a propensity to learn. What they learn depends on which niche they find themselves in.

[nwrickert (Neil Rickert)]

@r_speir

I know logic. Logic says you must prove that the existence of God is a more difficult position to hold philosophically than his non-existence.

Where do I find that in the laws of logic?

[nwrickert (Neil Rickert)]

@r_speir

I just refuted this claim on the other thread where you originally made it. Babies are born in the image of God with a propensity to believe.

That’s an assertion, not a refutation.

[Roy (30-year veteran)]

@Faizal_Ali

@structureoftruth

Wow. If you genuinely believe it is possible for things that are (in actuality) moral atrocities to be morally permissible, then obviously you have different moral intuitions than mine.

I understand your confusion. Allow me to explain. Let’s take, as an example, the moral proscription against rape. I have no hesitation in saying that rape is not morally permissable for us as humans.

However, suppose there are other intelligent life forms on another planet …

Why take that approach?

The simplest refutation of @structureoftruth’s argument is:

Interlocutor 1: “do you think it is possible for (insert moral atrocity here) to be morally permissible?”
Interlocutor 2: “yes. It was morally permissible in (insert historical society here).”

This works for just about any atrocity you can imagine, including rape (of slaves) and genocide (cf the OT).

[dga471 (Daniel)]

@structureoftruth

Then you are not yet understanding me.

That some act is right or wrong for creatures of a certain nature does not make that moral evaluation subjective or contingent - the rightness or wrongness of said act for creatures of that nature is still an objective (not constituted by merely subjective features) necessary (could not have been otherwise) moral fact.

@Faizal_Ali

If you are conceding that moral values are contingent upon a number of factors including the type of beings we are discussing, the circumstances of their existence, etc, then it appears to me you are blowing your entire argument out of the water.

It seems that there is an equivocation over the word “contingent” here. @structureoftruth is arguing that he has independent arguments (written on his blog) which establish the existence of God and his attributes necessarily. Now, it is true that we don’t know if these arguments are successful and sound. We haven’t had a chance to discuss them. However, that the soundness of Matt’s arguments are unclear and that Matt’s Euthyphro defense depends on them does not mean that the latter only applies to contingent moral truths.

To take an analogy, we know that if the abc conjecture is true, it necessarily implies the truth of Fermat’s Last Theorem. Now, we currently don’t know if the conjecture is true or not. It’s an open problem. But that doesn’t then imply that the logical link between Fermat’s Last Theorem and the abc conjecture becomes only a contingent link. Our current, contingent, deficient state of knowledge doesn’t change the necessity of the logical link between the abc conjecture and the FLT.

This comes back to what I said earlier, namely that it seems that both participants have different assumptions coming into the debate. Matt seems to be coming into it assuming he is allowed to assume a host of separate propositions and arguments regarding God and morality. (This is like being allowed to assume for the sake of argument that the abc conjecture is true, and only striving to prove that it necessarily implies FLT is true.) However, Faizal is not convinced by the truth of these independent propositions and thus sees no way out of Euthyphro. Thus the debate has come to a stalemate.

[Faizal_Ali]

@dga471

It seems that there is an equivocation over the word “contingent” here. @structureoftruth is arguing that he has independent arguments (written on his blog) which establish the existence of God and his attributes necessarily .

I remain unconvinced. It appears to me that those arguments, if successful, only establish that God is morally perfect. That is not the same as demonstrating that God is the standard by which morality is determined.

To return to an earlier analogy: If we determine that a metal bar is exactly one metre in length, this does not entail that this is the bar that is used to establish the standard length of a metre. And it certainly does not establish that the choice of the bar that does establish the standard is not purely arbitrary.

[John_Harshman]

@dga471

@structureoftruth is arguing that he has independent arguments (written on his blog) which establish the existence of God and his attributes necessarily .

In other words, he has an excellent proof of his conjecture, but this margin is too small to contain it?

Not sure that it’s that excellent. He’s hinted that he relies on both the cosmological and ontological arguments, neither of which is impressive.

[Faizal_Ali]

@John_Harshman

He’s hinted that he relies on both the cosmological and ontological arguments, neither of which is impressive.

Oh, but we haven’t read Matt’s own personal views on those arguments on his blog. We are to accept that he has resolved all the problems and counter-arguments that have been made to those arguments over the centuries, and if we were to just read his blog we would have no more reservations about them.

Or maybe Matt thinks we have never heard of those arguments before, and we need him to educate us about them. Maybe he could clarify which of these two represent his position.