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Atheist Debates - Morality
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ส.ค. 2024
- From the Atheist Debates Patreon project (tinyurl.com/prn...
The topic that just keeps coming up...so let's take a look at morality.
Filmed on location at: Pedernales Falls State Park.
![[LIVE] สิ้นสุดการรอคอย | พี่ดู๋ สัญญา คุณากร | #คุยให้เด็กมันฟัง EP.44/1 (10/08/67)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/rBNZCh-QEYE/mqdefault.jpg)
That's the toughest looking golf course I've ever seen.
claudiaquat you’ve clearly never been to South Park.
claudiaquat thats not a tough golf course. It’s a tough scuba diving course
Pretty sure that's the fairway
@@hewhowatches5711
Damn course designers. They simply do not understand a balls attraction to water, and waters generous donation of +2 strokes to my scorecard.
Guys, you're completely missing the picture. It's obviously an ice skating rink that is in hibernation over summer.
As Matt's beard slowly turns him into a wizard. The proof is that you can plainly see him teleport around in the video. (Great series)
Yes, I'm aware of the various color problems. I'm not sure why this happened or how I can fix it, but I'll look into it.
Don't stand in the shade, with a bright sunny background. The camera balances color for the sunny area, which makes the shady area bluish. Also, the subject is dark and underexposed.
It's called white balance, usually cameras do it automatically , which seems to be the case here . The camera adjusted for the light on the background, which is why you are slightly blue. You can set it up manually, just look it up on your camera manual and this website is quite helpful too www.wikihow.com/Adjust-Your-Digital-Camera%27s-White-Balance.
I really appreciate that you take the time to find a good setting for these videos, but honestly, it's your content and delivery that is so compelling. I hope you eschew visual effects in your future submissions because your stuff is otherwise excellent for audio book listening.
Auditioning for the blue man group.
Thanks Matt, the only thing that mattered to me was the content - I don't let minor distractions detract from that. Btw - I didn't really have any distractions, so got your message clear as a bell.
A lot of Christian "morality" is nothing but PRUDISM anyway, which I think people can really DO WITHOUT.
What do you mean by prudism?
Dear Matt Dillahunty,
I hope you know how much you are contributing to the world. People like you are providing what people like Dawkins have failed to provide: a calm, rational, humanist, constructive presentation of the Atheist perspective.
When you die and go to heaven Matt will be standing there, he will say "Were you expecting someone else?"
As a Believer that repented & Believed the Gospel Message before he died in his sins I hope so !
But if a atheist stillll.......
.... Not hardly !
Anti Theist
sounds just like something the devil would say except , he decided he wanted to be “GOD “ , but to do that he’s got to try to over through GOD !
His process is Lying , murdering , stealing , oh he is in a very bad since of denial about everything , Like Democrats , see he’s found a resting place with u.
But sure your not gonna acknowledge that , huh !
It will be brought to light one day soon, of ya Decision.
Anti Theist
Christian 1st , American 2nd!
Choices , choices , choices !
Choice !, I Heard the Gospel message of Jesus Christ !
My choice , .... it is the most truthful loving information that I have ever come across . I said yes ,in my heart , It is true . I repented , acknowledged in my Heart that He is God . That I was the sinner He died on the cross for . His spirit of truth entered my body , & I know the Bible is true ! But only the KJV Bible , that’s another subject though . I was saved & my life changed . My desire is to tell as many ppl as I can this story till I die ,
Acts 2:36-42
If u have considered that same story & said no , u will not believe it ,
That was your choice !
Even though it will go down as the worst decision you will ever make in this life . Should you stay your coarse .
Anti Theis
Still your choice to believe such info !
How much peace of mind do you have ?
Anti Theist
Choice !
Thank you again, Matt. Now I know the right counter arguments to use in the break room at work. My girlfriend was a Jehovah's Witness when we first met, had been her whole life. Was completely devoted. She met me we started watching some Matt Dillahunty Atheist Experience and Aron Ra. Now she thinks all religion and Gods are laughable. Couldn't have done it without you guys. I think anybody could be converted if they just had an atheist friend that sat down with them and watch TH-cam. By sitting down and watching and letting the geniuses speak for you, you can be sure to not get your facts wrong and you can be sure that any argument the person you're watching these videos with can be addressed with a small amount of patience and friendship. You will at the very least, plant the seeds of admitting agnosticism.
And when I said converted there, I meant to say de-converted.
Wow dude great job of de-converting her out of that cult. You're lucky she would even consider thinkin differently. Most jws would just completely ignore videos like this, or say it's from the devil or something of that sort. Completely brainwashed people who can't think for themselves.
Very cool story.
I think probably the most important factor is having an atheist friend to watch videos with. If someone is left to themselves to challenge their faith, they'll likely get uncomfortable and scared about what it means to abandon their faith, and just turn right back to it. Having someone there to meet them at their de-conversion shows they aren't alone. All atheists need to know that they're not alone.
***** It is a sad fact that many people tend to be open to believe only what people around them profess to believe, and that the truly deconvert people you frequently need to make sure that they are proximate to deconverted people - it is exactly the reason why so many cults ban contact with non-believers and encourage shunning of those who leave the cult.
Andrew Tall It is sad. I guess I should add to that, that de-conversion will only "stick" if the people that de-convert, do so of their own volition, after reviewing the facts. Someone conned into atheism will be conned right back into religion.
I've come across a couple arguments in my repertoire that have been proven faulty and so I've abandoned them. If I'm going to assist in someone's de-conversion, I want it to be with an intellectually honest discussion.
Well done Matt! A beautiful mind at work. Great info and arguments as always, thank you. Warm regards from Greece.
Beard is looking dope as fuck.
"Come, then, Epictetus, shave yourself."
*"If I am a philosopher, I will not shave myself."*
"But I will take off your head?"
*"If that will do you any good, take it off."*
GrifMoNeY The context in that dialogue is extremely important. It's not about the beard per se.
www.sacred-texts.com/phi/epi/disc.txt
Abiogenesis has no evidence! Scientists have created enzymes and RNA . But it took teams of researchers working hard and the use of supercomputers and designed sequencing machines! To do it!!! This shows obvious DESIGN, not abiogenesis: which is life arising on its own from strictly naturalistic processes, and without intelligent direction.
Its not from 'scratch,' but based heavily on design concepts already found in living cells! This is different from abiogenesis and has no bearing on it because the life they are trying to create would be Designed. It DID NOT FORM BY CHANCE CHEMICAL PROCESSES!!
5tonyvvvv Complexity does not imply design. Isn't it strange that when we're trying to understand this complex universe, we ignore the possibility that God Himself is likely in a far more complex meta-universe? What if God was designed by transdimensional thought entities?
My comment about his beard still stands. Fuck you guys.
This might be my favorite video from you yet. I liked the comparison of ethics between a child who was threatened/bribed over one who has an explanation of how their behavior affects others. This illustrated the disconnect many theists seem to have with the moral argument - motivation. Later you talked about how doing unto others as you would have done unto you, and how this doesn't necessarily reflect what another person might want. This is the only point in your presentation where I'd see a logical hole for a theist to drive a wedge into, though I don't personally consider it a hole. Here's my two cents on why I agree with you, but see a possible avenue for misunderstanding:
Your first comparison was between two children whose motivations differed, and why that's important to the development of morality. This resonated strongly with me, and offers a possible explanation of why so many fundamentalists seem to think we'd all run around causing as much harm as possible without their divinely prescribed moral system. I've heard Ray Comfort state he'd be in jail if he wasn't a Christian. Without the threat of hell and the promise of heaven, he feels he himself would turn to harmful actions. This could be a silent adherence to the second part in the quote you mentioned where the fool has said in his heart there is no god, where atheists can do no good. Or it might be something more inherently pathological, but either way it is demonstrably false.
It's true to state that someone might not be adequately served by the Golden Rule, given they might have different preferences than you, and it's also true to state that children can be better taught through the Golden Rule than through threats or bribes. I don't think children generally have the maturity to understand not only the consequences of their actions as it would relate to them, but also to understand this in relation to others whose preferences they don't know, so your original comparison was an excellent one (in my opinion), while leaving just enough wriggle room for apologists to make an issue of it when related to the inadequacy of the Golden Rule in a complex social environment. As you mentioned, this is a complex issue that will have complex answers.
I think it's necessary to have rule of law, or the threat of punishment, along with the understanding of the consequences of actions in relation to others. A combination seems to be the only viable answer at this point. Some people will be swayed by understanding morality as it relates to them and others, and some will require the stick and carrot. However, I agree wholeheartedly that if you're discussing morality, then the only "moral" decision comes from consideration of consequences, not via avoidance of threat or attainment of reward.
this is my new favorite video of all time for many many reasons (:
Yaa he just F*ucked religious beliefs upside down right and left
Matt, you are a good man.
I am fond of the Asian version of the 'golden rule', "Do not do to others, what you do not want done to yourself."
Why on earth do you favor this quintessentially Christian value?
@@a.brekkan4965 Just because they stole it, doesn't make it theirs.
Want for your brother what you want for yourself. Also, don't be greedy for what others have. Like the Bible says, "don't covet your neighbour's wife"?
@@Diamondraw4Real What if she wants to be coveted? What if he is into that? What if he dies? What if you just find someone similar?
Besides, there is nothing wrong with coveting, we all want things, the problem is how some people go about getting them. As long as you are not stepping on anyone else's toes, I don't see a problem.
@@TheDevian Of course, it is theirs, It has been theirs since the beginning of their religion. Also, if you accuse Christianity of stealing it, you must prove the theft. Can you?
As a rule, human civilizations borrow from and copy one another. To call it theft is utterly adolescent. You, according to your own understanding, steals The Golden Rule from the Asians. That makes you as much of a thief as you accuse Christianity of being.
Anyway, if you were to reject this as BS, you would be standing further away from Christianity (and other religions). Don`t you want to do that?
Thanks you Matt. This was just the information I needed for an ongoing online debate (as fruitless as it may be). As usual you are on point.,
So many advances in morality and ethics, like vastly improving the treatment of women and getting rid of slavery, have occurred in spite of religious teaching and not because of it. Secular morality is not perfect, but it is responsive to changes in culture and understanding and gives us a change to progress beyond bronze-age thinking.
TIL: Matt Dillahunty has the power of instantaneous teleportation. Hail Matt!
Great stuff man, I have been consuming all of these! Thanks for making them!
One objection to the claim that we teach children everything about morals. All the recent work by psychology (as popularized by Steven Pinker) says that we are not blank slates and have a great deal of genetic predeterminants for intelligence, behaviours, moral dispositions etc. Animal biological studies also show innate tendencies for cooperation, reciprocity, shame, shunning - a primordial grounding for human moral behavior. Morality seems to have a evolutionary basis and in that way starts as a kernel of objectivity. It is also tempered by rational decision-making to flesh-out these questions, but the genetic grounding seems to be solid.
I agree with you. I think Matt emphasizes nurture over nature too much. Both interact to produce the morality of a person.
You also see tiger mom smacking the cub when it acts like an asshat. I’m guessing you never saw lord of the flies?
The only bad thing about this video is that I can't give it more than one like.
Matt Dillahunty is philosophically the most rational person on the planet. I agree on every topic and argument he presents. I’ve never had someone I wanted to be like throughout my life but you would be the first! You aren’t the atheist they wanted, you are the atheist we needed!
Agreed 🫶🏻
If I were God, I would be disgusted by people who do good things just to kiss my ass. I would look much more favorably on people who don't believe in me and do good things for the purpose of helping others without a reward in mind.
Chris AA well said. I held a supervisor position at work and some of the help would try hard to kiss my ass and it was so annoying
What kind of camera was used to film this? And I must say you are good in finding beutiful natural backgrounds in your videos. Your work is greatly appriciated. Thank you.
In case anyone is wondering, parts of the movie Predators was filmed at Pedernales Falls (where this video was shot).
This is one of the best videos on youtube. Maybe even top 10.
Christian babble.
Almost all of your debates come down to morality lol
Thanks for making this video and keep up the good work!
Is it any wonder?
"Morality" encompasses a large fuzzy, vague, and general concept that MUST be
skipped-over, cherry-picked, and individually-customized by theists just so they can accept their own doctrines.
If they, as individual humans, believe it's morally wrong to take a life for any reason, but their primary doctrine talks about rules saying they are/were required to kill somebody if they see them working on a Sunday, they have to be able to explain that...not just to those who ask questions about it, or call them out on it, but also to themselves.
In a way, 'morality' (of the self, of which being 'honest' is a quality) is what it all boils down to anyway.
If theists truly accepted the generally accepted and followed a set of basic 'morality' rules set forth by their own societies (don't lie, cheat, steal, etc), they could not follow their own doctrines and be honest at the same time.
To do so, they would have to be completely honest, and that would not allow them to have the financial, political, and social clout they enjoy now because most of the things they have to say or do to gain or keep those things require that they deceive, steal from, or kill others (if not directly, then in some round-about way that also breaks a firm set of morality rules).
Just my thoughts on it.
And thank goodness he does. High time we took back our morality from religion.
+CopalFreak There many kind of theist. I see millions of believers in the world and I do not see them not accepting the rules democratically imposed by society. A different thing is that they have to agree with everything that the majority of the people decides. They do not have to do that, and you do not have to do that either.
Christians societies have evolved all of them into democracies. Those societies that are oficially atheist are the ones in which the values of freedom have been more damages.And with this I am not saying that you are an enemy of freedom.
+Juan Llorente
Theism is an enemy of freedom.
It requires the placation of a deity in order to gain personal reward, has the threat of punishment for non-compliance, and uses group enforced peer-pressure and fear-mongering to impose it. That is not freedom, that is coercion.
Christianity is not democratic..a god demands that you follow his rules, or else...even if you don't agree with them because they are immoral. Religious people make excuses for many of the rules they are supposed to follow but don't.
They do not specifically have to agree with everything that the majority of people decide, they just have to agree with the doctrine of whatever particular sect of religion they are involved in. That said, if they don't like it, they can just leave that church and find another (most of the time...there are several exceptions in which they cannot leave without threat of serious consequences such as being ostracized or killed).
There are no 'officially atheist' societies that I am aware of.
If you are referring to 'officially atheist groups' or organizations that exists in the United States, what damages are you talking about?
Those 'officially atheist' groups are trying to PROTECT freedom for the majority, by not forcing ALL children in public school to say religion-specific prayers, so that it's fair to those that are not a part of that specific religion and those that are not religious; thereby respecting the rights of ALL people in the fairest way possible.
Despite the constitutional laws in the U.S. that clearly say that publicly funded schools cannot endorse or espouse any specific religion, Christians keep insisting they have the right to force their religion onto everybody.
Those 'officially atheist' groups are trying to ensure that women have the same rights as men, and that the arbitrary rules of invisible and immoral deities do not govern our societies and impose rules that are damaging to societies as a whole.
Rules and laws that prevent people from harassing, torturing, or killing others because of their difference in religion, gender, skin color, nationality, or sexual orientation.
Laws are in place (in most countries) to prevent these things, but religious people are the majority that are breaking those laws, and they are doing so specifically in the name of their religion.
It is only very recent in U.S. history that people of the same gender can get married, and it was not too long ago when there were rules in place that prevented people of different skin color from being married. Those rules were put into place because of RELIGION.
Those 'officially atheist' organizations are trying to do more good for the RIGHT reasons, as opposed to religious organizations who only do what their perceive as 'good' when it falls within their particular realm of morality and rule-sets. ( e.g. they only help other people for personal gain (karma, soul-saving, social acceptance, etc), or they will help one group of people, but not another...like a Christian group typically would not publicly donate time and money to an outwardly atheistic or Muslim cause, even if the cause itself is the most important, unless it specifically empowered their group in some way. (political for instance).
Religions are in no way, democratic. Individuals do not get to 'vote' on which rules in their holy book they follow and which ones they don't...some choose to override the legal laws in their area because of their religion (killing people because of they are a different religion..even though it is against the law, they feel their deity gives them the right to do so).
Theism evolve in way in which societyies that were overewhelmingly christians became democracies. Along with comunism came atheism and were atheism has become official there is nothing but authoritarian criminal states that has destroyed anything that has to do with freedom. Stop living in the past and focus more in the recent history of humanity.
Believers do not try to impose anything. Atheist do.
"Secular morality resulted to the Holocaust"
*glances at the Old Testament carnage and immorality
Point out that Nazis were Christians. Then they'll argue that Hitler wasn't a Christian. Then point out it doesn't matter because...The Nazis and the German people were Christians who either committed the atrocities or allowed it to happen.
@@kelliepatrick519Hey remember that time when atheist regimes threw sticks of dynamite in churches, murdered and persecuted Christians within the last century? I sure do.
Bottom line: why do I care about someone else at all? In the end, I want to thrive and if I can do something that will get me ahead, I will do it. I want to maximize my well being. For example, a coworker develops a useful spreadsheet; I take it and re-brand it as my own work and submit it up the food chain and get recognition. I advanced my well being despite doing what most would think is immoral.
Matt would probably say you still did something wrong
@@friedfrog5447 - I think you hit the nail on the head. We can all say that what I did was wrong...but what is the foundation of saying that it is objectively wrong? If morality is determined by the majority then we could have a society that is morally wrong about something from an outsider's perspective but held as moral by the majority of the society. e.g. the majority of the population of the Aztec kingdom could feel that it is morally right to sacrifice people to their Gods while the nearby Teotihuacan society may consider it immoral. Dillahunty seems to be saying that a moral system is "objective" if we define goal(s) and then strive to reach those goal(s) through setting rules. The problem is that the goals are set by the majority and they can change. I would use the word "objective" to mean universal and eternal and I am in more in line with Hitchens where we are hard-wired to be moral - that is that man is basically good - which puts me in a quandary since it conflicts with Dawkins (selfish Gene) and Darwin (Survival of the Fittest) and puts me in cahoots with Christians (who believe God is love, God created man, therefore man is good; and their moral law is love your neighbor as yourself).
@@MrRhomas913
*Dillahunty seems to be saying that a moral system is "objective" if we define goal(s) and then strive to reach those goal(s) through setting rules.*
Exactly. And someone else could have their own goal or come to different conclusion while having the same well-being goal. Matt comes off as arrogant a lot of the time. And as usual, the instant knee-jerk reaction from so many atheists is just to attack and be condescending to anyone who disagrees with them.
> _For example, a coworker develops a useful spreadsheet; I take it and re-brand it as my own work and submit it up the food chain and get recognition. I advanced my well being despite doing what most would think is immoral._
How would you feel about coworkers taking your work and rebranding as their own? Probably not very good. If you don't want to live in that kind of society, then the moral thing is to not contribute to that kind of society. Simple. Because you live in a society, your actions affect others and their actions affect you. This was explained in the video. Your example of well-being was shortsighted.
@@MrRhomas913 > _We can all say that what I did was wrong...but what is the foundation of saying that it is objectively wrong?_
If we agree that well-being is the goal, then we can objectively observe actions and their consequences, and make conclusions about whether it benefits well-being or not. If well-being is not your goal and you want to go around killing people, then you would not be welcome to participate in a society that cares about well-being. A society that doesn't care about well-being will not survive. Well-being can be debated, and there is always a tension between individual and collective well-being in doing so. Sacrificing people is objectively not conducive to their well-being, even if the majority is mistakenly convinced their own well-being will be increased by influencing the gods. It has been shown that killing innocents who could grow up and contribute to society is not overall beneficial. There is always room for improvement, which is why morality is not absolute. "Objective" does not mean universal and eternal, "absolute" does. The goal itself is subjective, but once we agree on a goal, we can make objective comparisons according to different contexts.
Sometimes you sound just like Jeff Goldblum and I love it. It’s a subtle cadence that you carry when you speak, it’s not all the time (in fact it usually just comes out with little inflections and pronunciations and how long you say a word, just aspects of your overall speech), but it’s awesome lol
Makes listening to you even better than it already is.
I am a social worker and one day a suicidal caller called in. I got the call and thankfully so, because I had to send the police out to take her to the hospital, thereby saving her life. The caller mentioned she had talked to one of my co-workers, (a devout christian). I confronted my co-worker and she said, "it's not my day to take calls". She blindly transferred the call and it went to another of my co-workers voice mail. Did jesus say it wasn't his day to heal people? So the christian couldn't be bothered and the Atheist saved the callers life. So who has moral/ethics and who doesn't? Try and defend this persons behavior, because you can't. Further, my co-worker stopped talking to me because I reported her to management. Wouldn't a good christian have realized their mistake and gone to their brother to seek forgiveness? Matthew 18:15 - Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.
What exactly is a real christian? I've heard so many times that other christians aren't real christians. Having a bad day, are you serious??? Someone almost died and called this lady for help but has to wonder if she's having a bad day. I swear, the christian bullshit just never stops flying.
Thank you and I wish you well
+BiggerThanHeidi
Some of those features are terrible and others are irrelevant. You're ignoring the vast majority of the bible and apparently living in a bubble. If that you're definition, then there's no such thing as a "real christian."
+BiggerThanHeidi I think I can accept what you say to a point. I had a coworker that said he was a Christian and went to church semi-regularly. He was often cantankerous, cussed liked a sailor and even hinted once he approved of what happened to MLK.
+Kevin Kurtz Believing doesn't make you good, and being a good doesn't mean that you are always right
Thanks Matt for a nice overview of morality. I mostly agree with you. I think you should develop your ideas in this area further. Who should decide correct morality? How should they decide? Is objectivity of morality an all-or-nothing phenomenon or does it fall on a continuum? More thought and research is needed in this area.
“Do unto others as they would have you do to them” could lead to a person to being taken advantage of. The Golden Rule can’t be boiled down to a simple sentence.
Matt is the man, that background is blowing my mind right now.
Where do I get my morals from ? I don't have any ... I make judgements based on my conscience, but morals are man-invented rules that no one agrees on - just like God.
+Lionel Richards Actually we agree on many things. There are many laws that regulate moral issues that believers and not believers agree to be right.
Juan Llorente some agree on others dont depends in the society you live in
Depend the society in which you live and also depends of what you believe. My point is that if someone religious, based on his morals reach to the conclusion that death penalty is bad. Nobody would say that the argument of that person is not rational because is based on religious beliefs.
Juan Llorente agree
Your point is insane ... ANY conclusion that is based on ANY religious belief is irrational ... you cannot make decisions based on non-existant mythological beings and expect to be rational ...
Next time I get the morality argument I'll be asking if the ten commandments are an example of god's absolute morality.
Then I would ask which set of ten commandments, since we all know there's two.
Then I would ask if 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' is an example of this absolute morality.
Once they say 'Yes' I'll ask them if there's any situation that might occur that would be right to kill another person.
IE: Self Defense.
More likely than not theists will miss the point of this, or they'll cut me off once they see where I'm going.
Hey, as you can tell by the name, I'm an atheist too. I'm sorry to say I've never heard about the two sets. Would you elaborate, please?
Cornbread Atheist We have the set that's always quoted in American courthouses, then we have the set that's actually labeled the Ten Commandments:
*Exodus 34;14-28* _King James Version_ (KJV)
*14* _For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:_
*15* _Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice;_
*16* _And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods._
*17* _Thou shalt make thee no molten gods._
*18* _The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt._
*19* _All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male._
*20* _But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty._
*21* _Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest._
*22* _And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end._
*23* _Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel._
*24* _For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy God thrice in the year._
*25* _Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning._
*26* _The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk_.
*27* _And the Lord said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel._
*28* _And he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the_ *ten commandments.*
Cornbread Atheist
The Decalogue, aka the Ten Commandments
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments
The Wikipedia page is rather complete on this.
Xyander Thank you so much for the reply. I'm a little fuzzy on what those 10 commandments mean. I read them, but it was very dense. Lots of admonitions, and I guess I was expecting the old "thou shalt" type of commandments.
Jammit Timmaj Thank you. You are rifht, it is very thorough. Both you and Xyander have been a lot of help. It's appreciated!
Great video. Keep them coming!
I am European and was born into a 100% secular community. I did not even know, that religion even existed until i was 10 years old. I consider,although i live in Asia now, the society i was born into as to be highly morally, without cynicism and bigotry - and without the necessity of a commander in heaven
Matt claims that reality should be the arbitor of right and wrong. Unfortunately, it was reality that gave rise to the mechanism of natural selection that empowered and exalted the fittest members of species to be able to leverage their survival advantages to opportunistically exploit and harm others. So, if reality is the cause driving carnage and harm at such a grandscale throughout the duration of the existence of species on this planet,then exactly what are we supposed to conclude about the moral guidance that reality is providing there if not that it is perfectly okay to harm others as reality has arbitrated in line with Matt’s initial claim?
Reality is not a person giving advice, and reality doesn't want us to do this or that. Reality is more like a box that we're trapped in, constraining our actions. Reality dictates what we can and cannot do, and reality determines the results of our choices. If we're trying to make the world better, reality dictates what we must do in order to make that happen. That is how reality is the arbiter of right and wrong.
@@Ansatz66
Ansatz: Reality is not a person giving advice,
I don’t know that such a characterization of reality is accurate, seeing that at least a portion of reality contains people giving advice. Or, do you imagine such individuals to exist outside of the broader scope of reality?
Ansatz: and reality doesn't want us to do this or that.
That may be true as concerns the nonliving portions of our reality, but may not be so true as concerns the living portions of our reality.
Ansatz: Reality is more like a box that we're trapped in, constraining our actions.
I suppose it is convenient to view it that way.
Ansatz: Reality dictates what we can and cannot do,
That seems reasonable, to the extent that all that we actually manage to do exists as a part of reality.
Ansatz: and reality determines the results of our choices.
Or, at least, it leaves a space for such choices to be carried out, assuming we are not victims of fate.
Ansatz: If we're trying to make the world better, reality dictates what we must do in order to make that happen.
I think the problem with the above point is the word “better”! Which is better, vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry ice cream? This concept of “better” is often little more than a matter of personal taste and too subjective in scope to identify any kind of genuinely realistic goal for the state our world should be striving for which is why logicians tend to remove it outside the domain of factual inquiry.
Ansatz: That is how reality is the arbiter of right and wrong.
But, it doesn’t really explain what is right or wrong about reality in any moral sense-especially if one employs a rather Naturalistic world view. It merely tells us what is the case under the present state of conditions governing the scenario being played out. I believe it was here that Sir Richard Dawkins kind of painted a rather dystopian view of existence in that he felt there is no right or wrong or justice in nature and people are going to get hurt and you won’t find any real rhyme or reason for it. Instead of morality, Naturalism simply employs mechanisms like natural selection, adaptation and so on to determine if you are fit to survive or not. Why a natural atheist would ever see a need for ethics, morality or the right or wrong inherent in concepts like “good and evil” is only because such natural atheists are still desperately clinging to these guilt-based religious teachings they failed to dump at the door when accepting their Atheist club membership card. And so, that guilt keeps coming back to haunt them as they strive to find meaning in the heavily religious oriented notions of morality, ethics and the right and wrong of concepts like good and evil. It really makes one wonder why such folks left religion only to continue to hold so tightly to their deep seated religious beliefs as they pretend to be atheists when in reality they still have one foot firmly planted in their religious principles and upbringing.
The primary goal of nature, as it applies to species, would be survival of the fittest. What would be a higher principle to appeal to than that for a natural atheist, and such a principle leads logically and ultimately to whatever opportunistic bent is required to maximize one’s own survival advantages.
@@coreybray9834 "Which is better, vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry ice cream?"
Morality isn't about those sorts of preferences. Choosing the wrong flavor of ice cream is not immoral. When we speak of morality we're talking about things far more substantive than matters of taste. We're talking about the good of the world, about people's material prosperity, about the difference between war and peace, sickness and health, terror and security, life and death. This is not like vanilla and chocolate where some people like one and others like the other.
"It was here that Sir Richard Dawkins kind of painted a rather dystopian view of existence in that he felt there is no right or wrong or justice in nature and people are going to get hurt and you won’t find any real rhyme or reason for it."
Why call that dystopian? It sounds more like an unfortunate but inescapable fact about this world that we actually live in. It would be nice if we could improve the situation, but so far it's the world we find ourselves in.
"Naturalism simply employs mechanisms like natural selection, adaptation and so on to determine if you are fit to survive or not."
Isn't that something everyone agrees upon, not just naturalists? Animals live and die in the wild based upon their biological traits and their survival depends upon how well adapted they are to their environment. Regardless of what philosophy we subscribe to, we cannot escape reality.
"Why a natural atheist would ever see a need for ethics, morality or the right or wrong inherent in concepts like 'good and evil' is only because such natural atheists are still desperately clinging to these guilt-based religious teachings they failed to dump at the door when accepting their Atheist club membership card."
Many atheists have never been religious, and even people who have never been indoctrinated into any religion still concern themselves with morality. We all have to live in this world and so we all have reason to concern ourselves with the world's welfare. Aside from a few bizarre cases like serial killers, we all want to see other people thrive and prosper, regardless of what we believe about gods or the origin of the universe. It's not about guilt. It's about striving for a better world.
"That guilt keeps coming back to haunt them as they strive to find meaning in the heavily religious oriented notions of morality, ethics and the right and wrong of concepts like good and evil."
Why are good and evil religiously oriented notions? If we give food to a starving family, isn't this a worldly act that produces worldly benefit? We're talking about a physical transfer of material, and when their hunger is sated it is because material nutrients have entered their bodies. What part of this is religious?
"It really makes one wonder why such folks left religion only to continue to hold so tightly to their deep seated religious beliefs as they pretend to be atheists when in reality they still have one foot firmly planted in their religious principles and upbringing."
They left religion because they stopped believing that their religion was real. They faced the horrible realization that no one in their religion really knows what they are talking about, and it is all just stories being passed back and forth between them. Just like all those other religions, they discovered that their own religion had no better basis in fact, so even if it might be true, there's no good reason to believe it. Once they stop blindly trusting the words of preachers and scripture and take a look for themselves behind the curtain to see that there's nothing to be found but empty words, then there's no way to go back to blind trust no matter what they may think about morality.
"The primary goal of nature, as it applies to species, would be survival of the fittest."
Nature does not have goals. Nature is not a person.
@@Ansatz66
@Corey Bray "Which is better, vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry ice cream?"
Ansatz: Morality isn't about those sorts of preferences. Choosing the wrong flavor of ice cream is not immoral.
Well, I was focusing more on your subjective use of “better”, such as in your phrase, “If we're trying to make the world better,…”, because when you ask people what is better, some like vanilla, others like chocolate and still others will like strawberry, because people have different subjective opinions as to what they like and dislike about varying flavors of ice cream when it comes to assessing which flavor they view as “better”, just as they have varying subjective opinions about what they like, dislike and want to change about our world and what they feel would constitute our world being “better”.
Ansatz: When we speak of morality we're talking about things far more substantive than matters of taste
Unfortunately, the problemnatural atheists often run up against is how to objectively establish a moral framework without falling prey to such subjective sentaments as preferences and tastes getting in the way. And that immediately raises the question of where a natural atheist should turn to get guideance in matters of moral clarity.
Ansatz: We're talking about the good of the world,
It’s not clear what possesses you to think the world would be good or evil either one or why such assignments would even matter in a model of natural atheism. Usually, atheists tend to harbor extreme skepticism over such ideas of “good and evil” carrying any real meaning or weight in such discussions, not to mention placing general skepticism over the entire domain of morality altogether for that matter. This again raises the critical question of where natural atheists turn for guidance in developing a moral framework.
Ansatz: about people's material prosperity, about the difference between war and peace, sickness and health, terror and security, life and death. This is not like vanilla and chocolate where some people like one and others like the other.
It is one thing to say it isn’t like choosing vanilla and chocolate, and another thing entirely to demonstrate that is actually the case, Ansatz. Just take the issue of people’s material prosperity. Some people believe that it is morally good to be blessed with material prosperity. Others think material prosperity is inherently morally corrupting of those who possess it. Still others hold no position on material prosperity being morally relevant at all. So, if we can reason isomorphically from here, some choose vanilla, others like chocolate, and still others like strawberry ice cream. And we find this being pretty much the case across the board when it comes to how people approach making moral assessments on most issues thought to belong to the moral domain. People simply have a tendency to gravitate towards their likes and preferences even when it comes to issues of morality. Just as people have a tendency to gravitate towards their likes and preferences when it comes to assessing what a “better world” looks like in their grand utopian view. Consequently, it is rather unclear why a natural atheist would think morality is even relevant in a model of natural atheism.
Corey: "It was here that Sir Richard Dawkins kind of painted a rather dystopian view of existence in that he felt there is no right or wrong or justice in nature and people are going to get hurt and you won’t find any real rhyme or reason for it."
Ansatz: Why call that dystopian?
Because Dawkins characterized nature as being a cause for great suffering and without justice, so it isn’t far from a dystopian definition.
Dystopian - relating to or denoting an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice.
Ansatz: It sounds more like an unfortunate but inescapable fact about this world that we actually live in.
If you feel that the situation being “unfortunate” is a more appropriate characterization, then I don’t think that would take away anything substantive from the ideas Dawkins was setting forth as it concerns his personal views of nature. Whether his view constitutes a guarantee that the universe in which we exist, for which he makes his observations, is actually naturally occuring, however, would be a very different matter entirely. I do find Dawkins to be somewhat lazy in that regard, and suspect that he simply takes his belief that our universe is naturally occuring mostly on faith.
Ansatz: It would be nice if we could improve the situation, but so far it's the world we find ourselves in.
But, if the world we find ourselves in has no right, wrong or justice to speak of, as Dawkins suggests, then how would you get any kind of meaningful moral framework out of such a world view??? Even if we assume that the world in which we exist is natural, as Dawkins does, it would be ridiculous to imagine that an unaware, unintelligent system of nature would possess anything close to a moral compass, or for that matter a basis for a moral compass or have anything similar to impart in our general direction to support us in an attempt to develop any kind of moral framework: a framework whose relevance is again called into question by the very assessment of nature itself that Dawkins provides when he dismisses such a system as having no right, wrong or justice to speak of. Consequently, if morality exists, it doesn’t appear that such a system is a naturally occuring one, but is derived from other nonnatural principles and considerations instead.
@@Ansatz66
Corey: "Naturalism simply employs mechanisms like natural selection, adaptation and so on to determine if you are fit to survive or not."
Ansatz: Isn't that something everyone agrees upon, not just naturalists?
No, because Christians, for example, believe that God can circumvent such considerations by way of the power to resurrect the dead and to grant eternal life to those deemed to be righteous (where the character of the individual is what God views as being the central trait that determines the fitness of those he chooses to survive versus those who he intends to show deserves to perish when it comes time to carry out the final executive judgment). They would also tend to view that the mechanism you think of as natural selection is really a designed mechanism within a system of mechanics that is not naturally occuring at all, but highly balanced and finely tuned for such optimization. Ideas like “nature” and the naturalism that eventually arose out of observations of mechanical mechanisms providing this optimization is not an idea born out of or even relevant to original Hebrew thought, but appears to have arisen many centuries after the writing of Biblical Torah among the 6th century BC. presacratic Greek philosophers, dating back to at least the time of Anaxamander or earlier--along with such ideas as “spontaneous Generation”: a form of Abiogenesis that was debunked by scientists like Redi, Spallanzani and Pasteur and which reoriented science to the more biogenesis centric view of the law of Biogenesis as the dominating model for why life exists in our universe.
Ansatz: Animals live and die in the wild based upon their biological traits and their survival depends upon how well adapted they are to their environment.
That would seem to be the case. One does not have to subscribe to naturalism to reach that conclusion though, because this conclusion has been reached by observation whether the mechanics driving such biological systems was naturally occuring or designed into place, either one.
Ansatz: Regardless of what philosophy we subscribe to, we cannot escape reality.
One would tend to think that is the case. The problem is that our grasp of reality and how it truly works may be extremely limited. This is constantly suggested by the fact that we keep discovering new things about our reality that we weren’t aware of before said discoveries were being made. Also, as was hinted at in Nova’s “The Elligant Universe” where Brian Green was trying to show a dog what a Ricci tensor was used for, our ability to grasp the essential truths underlying the reality in wich we exist at a high level may be even further limited simply by the limitations of our brain as many scientists often suspect.
Corey: "Why a natural atheist would ever see a need for ethics, morality or the right or wrong inherent in concepts like 'good and evil' is only because such natural atheists are still desperately clinging to these guilt-based religious teachings they failed to dump at the door when accepting their Atheist club membership card."
Ansatz: Many atheists have never been religious,
I find such a claim to be rather dubious-especially among those atheists who claim a belief in “nature” which has been a central and potentially ancient belief inherent in many of the world’s religions long before it was adopted as a part of the modern atheist movement. In fact, I find that atheists start to get a little testy when you ask them to explain how they came to the conclusion that the universe they exist within is itself naturally occuring, because I suspect these individuals do not like to have their faith questioned-especially when they run around pretending that they are faithless, rational thinkers which is something so laughable it is absurd. If these folks ever actually took the time to look up the meaning of an axiom of logic and grasped how much assumptive faith underpins the entire rational domain of thought in the axiomic layer of reasoning, they would truly crap their pants to learn just how much faith they have been dependent upon and employing the entire time. And the other side of this problem is that people can be fully indoctrinated into religious ideas and beliefs without even realizing that is happening in their case. Just consider how much time is spent conditioning people from an early age to ideas like “nature” and “morality”. Most people don’t even pause to question it, let alone recognize how deeply such ideas pervade society and the particular cultural structures they are a part of to the point that the faith in which they invest in such ideas is deeply conditioned faith, not even faith they adopted by making well informed choices.
where do u get your morality if not from god
my answer
where do u get your morality if not from Zeus
***** moral is just the word we use for someone who is promoting well being
***** well yeah it's not always as clear cut as math......ant yet it's completely clear that cutting a kid's legs off is harmful and giving the kid food is the opposite of harmful.....and even a psychopath can recognise this even if they might not be compelled to promote well being......and if someone can't recognize that cutting someone's legs off for no reason and against their will as harmful ....they r completely detached from the human experience
***** like I said psychopaths can distinguish between harm and well being..........I am saying that if someone actually thinks that removing a kid's legs is actually not harmful .....they completely lack an understanding of what harmful means or anything else probably
and all that is necessary for someone to understand what harm is ....is just having a barely functioning cognition
***** so examples r not evidence ...... XD
what I am talking about is ...harm.....it's an actual thing no matter how we struggle to define it and no matter how it evolves and it depends no a thousand factors ....there r actions that r in fact harmful and those that r the opposite of that ....and moral and immoral r just different words for that
***** haha no evidence that harm is immoral ....like I said what I mean by immoral is literary smth that is harmful .....u can even forget that word because u already have a better non convoluted hijacked word....harm
......and like I said it can depend on social constructs and whatever and yet there is such a thing just like our understanding of some phenomenon can depend on all sort of stuff.....there is in fact a thing like removing a kid's legs for no reason against his will ...which is harmful ....and it cannot be called anything else....because it is only limiting the kid and it is not providing any benefit
Matt. You once said in a video and I quote. "I get my morality from the careful consideration of my actions. I get my morality from an understanding of reality not an assertion of authority" and then you kept going but I can't remember what you said or which video you said it but I love that explanation
Don’t worry Matt, I was looking out for the mountain lions.
There is an aspect of the apologist argument that if morality is subjective or made by man then it isn't good enough, wrong, etc. It strikes me as anti-humanity. We aren't good enough to decide for ourselves what is right or wrong. We cannot make a functioning society without being told how.
I personally reject the premise entirely. Anti-humanity is not a worthy starting position for any kind of constructive decision making.
I agree, this is the same line of reasoning that leads to "morality is whatever god says it is". I believe Matt has asked the question, "If God says it was moral to do X, would you do it." The answer is always "Yes". Even when X = murder, rape, etc.
If reason cannot reach a person like that, I suppose nothing can.
Hardly surprising. Christianity is inherently anti-human.
Loads of apologists love to espouse the canard that "subjective" and "meaningless" are synonyms. It would take more than a few blows to the head from a baseball bat to make me believe such obvious garbage.
Ever heard of empathy?
Oners82 Yes why?
Please debate Subhoor Ahmad on evolution, he needs to be educated.
Suited for Aron Ra
People refer to morality as subjective because they refuse to pull from objective standards such as fairness, equality, well being and justice when making choices. "Will this action harm my target's well being less or more than the inaction would hurt my well being?" Is the question needed to be asked. There is an objective answer that can be gotten right (moral) or wrong (immoral). Like math has objective answers that can be answered with error.
An example is Who's well being is negatively affected more: A slave OR the slave owner with no slaves?
We know that's wrong because it *contradicts itself.* You'd be forced to say slavery was both objectively right and objectively wrong. Why? Because Person A grounds their morality on the Bible and Person B on well-being, and by your argument once you've picked a subjective moral goal that makes something objectively moral. Well this proves it doesn't.
And that should be obvious: the goal selection (the root of it all) was your subjective choice of a goal.
morality is things like not killing, not stealing, and not being mean to people.
ffairlane57
wtf are you talking about?
i dont believe in god, so stop talking about him to me... i am a man of science.
ffairlane57
whats your point?
ffairlane57
i agree that morality is not dependent solely upon religion...
what you fail to realize is if you continue to even acknowledge the concept of a god, you are only making their cause stronger...
if you want to erase religion from the map, then cease and desist your obssession with religion in its entirety...
hate brings more hate... and hate is a double bladed sword dude.
+ffairlane57 And some people believe in God and think that the porpuse of morality is similar than the one you think it is.
I love these videos and being able to read all the comments. Its like my own little rational community.
It never ceases to amaze me that people can't see our morality evolve over time. We have greatly improved over the centuries, and hopefully will continue to improve as we grow and evolve. The only thing that can stop us is religion.
@BruderShaft1
Source? Because you’re wrong. The exact opposite is the case. As a matter of fact, this is the very best time to have lived upon this earth as a human. People always seem to believe the opposite is the case, having not lived in the times they’re glamorizing, or even looking back at past years they did live in with rose colored glasses. When you look at the empirical facts, we are indeed living in the golden age for humans. That said, our morality keeps improving, as does out medicine, policing, living standard, availability of food & clean water, job safety, etc, etc, etc., so in one hundred years we should be much better than today.
@BruderShaft1
Really? Name a single time in history when we have had devastating wars & genocides, brutal dictators, racist, misogynist, homophobic, ignorant leaders (like Trump) & horrific forms of government. I’ll wait. After that, you should really do a little investigating as to what time period has been the very best time period go be alive as a human, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. You have to look no further than the population explosion to understand that many more people are living as compared to dying than during any other time in our past. Thanks to advances in science, medicine, some forms of government & morality overall, we are thriving as a species. We still have so far to go, but we are farther along now than we’ve EVER been before.
great product placement matt.
20:56 SUCH GREAT POINTS
This is gold :) Thanks Matt.
Awesome video
as someone who was largely raised on fear to make me behave, the effects can still be felt today. hopefully parents stop raising their kids like that one day...we can only hope.
The world's a scary place, even if you take the afterlife out of the equation. Smart to be afraid of a lot of things out there.
A point of history; the Russian Gulags were established under the Tsars and sanctioned and supported by the Orthodox Church. Curious that Father Hans did not seem to know this.
I really like this discussion. After watching some of the AE episodes and reading "The Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris, I have thought differently about morality. I think it is something that science can say something about.
***** Oh morality is real...it's a genuine suckers game, but genuine none the less.
***** In other words, it's a suckers game. Rest assured, I see your point and completely agree with it.
That is if you make the leap that what the individual wants is the betterment of society not itself
Q: What do religions and vacuum cleaners have in common?
A: They're both human inventions and they both *suck*.
+lnpilot Why ois impossible to debate with atheist without having lots of them being irrespectfull with other peoples ideas? Because athism always result in lack of tolerance to the others and limitations on freedom individuality.
Juan Llorente Ok, what exactly do you believe and *why*? What evidence do you have?
+lnpilot I don't know if you remember the video. but I believe in that source of morality that Mr. Dillahunty said that we call God and that we call it something else. I believe that we have to search for that source of morality and this search is not different that the search the scientist. After you discover something there is gonna be something else. If you think that the name of that source of morality is not God but Rick and that you believe that is your duty has human being to search for the things that are right. Go ahead, go and look for Rick I am perfectly find with that.
I do not have evidence of my believes, but we all have believes. You might believe that abortion is good or bad for our society, but you do not have evidence of that. You might believe that voting one party or the other is gonna be the best for our country, but we do not have evidence of that. Indeed there are many things that we believe despite of the fact that there are many evidence against those believes. For instance I believe that the world is plenty of evidence that indicate that socialism does not work and still we have Bernie Sanders as a serious candidates to be the president of the USA. Perhaps socialism can work despite all the evidences.
I don't have evidence of God because I do not even know how Gods look like. I just believe that we have to look for him. I believe in a sphere of reality that are not just empirical, morality is that reality. The God I believe in is defined by the own reality so those that are actually trying to explain the physical world are also trying to find God. I do not have problem with them.
The fact that we do not have evidence of things, does not mean that believing in them is irrational. I do not think that morality is irrational, and I do not believe that the reason of morality might be found in the field of science.
I also believe that is terrible that some people is prevented to search for the truth because of religious reason. Do you really believe that are secular society do not prevent us to search for some truths in the name of the new values that t our society maintain? I do not believe that and I have proofs of what I am saying.
Juan Llorente If you don't have evidence for god, then *why the hell would you believe in it*?
If you don't require evidence, then *how* do you even decide what to believe and what not to believe?
*What is your thought process*?
Do you flip a coin?
Do you just believe *everything that people tell you*?
Then, I'm a Nigerian prince...send me your money.
:)
If there's no evidence for gods, then how is it any different from imagination?
A god that has no observable effect on reality, is *indistinguishable from one that does not exist*.
If I told you that you owe me a thousand bucks, I bet you'd demand evidence before you sent me the money.
So, you require evidence for certain things, but not for others.
Why are you so *inconsistent*?
Atheism is simply being consistent about requiring evidence for *every claim*.
_Without evidence, a sack of claims is worth the sack_.
- lnpilot
As for morals:
How do you know that god is the "good guy"? You had to reach that conclusion somehow!
So, you do have a sense of morals outside of god's influence.
Or, did god just program you to think that he's the good guy?
That's exactly what a mind-controlling dictator would do...
Oh, and I sure hope your morals don't come from the Bible: genocide, child sacrifice, stoning children to death for misbehaving, torturing your children for eternity *simply for not loving your enough* (WTF?) all committed or commanded by the "all loving" god. Ahhem, *bullshit*.
If you do take your morals from the Bible, please stay very far from me and my family...
+lnpilot The answer is in my previous comment. We all believe in things without having evidences of them. Read the part about believing in things that are good or not and argue that part.
As far as I know, the definition of "objective" is "independent of any mind".
When using this definition, morality cannot possibly be objective, as it only even exists in the presence of at least two minds.
+theuncalledfor
Is science objective? A scientific knowledge only exists in the presence of minds? Is anything objective according to this definition?
I think the main problem isn't whether ethics are objective or not, but what objective even means in the language. Why do we attribute objective to some hypotheses and to some not.
I define morality to the degree to which a situation is voluntary or not . Because is objectively there are only two transactions a human can engage in ... voluntary or coercion
His beard is too long and out of control. . .just like religion!
+Dorian McCloud Athikst states=Dictatorships in every single state in which athism has been declared official. You are right, atheism=absolute control
Unfortunately, as an atheist, the subject of morality becomes an unnecessary over - complicated intellectual exercise, when actually the perfect moral precepts have been given to us by all the great saints and sages many thousands of years ago, simply “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you”. Your secular morality amounts to re-inventing the wheel.
POV: You're on a hike at your favorite park and Matt comes spitting facts.
Go watch the video MattDillahunty: The Superiority of Secular Morality to have him actually explain secular morality
If anyone needs a book to tell them what's right and wrong then they don't know what morals are. Morals should be learned through living life. Like Matt says morals should come from reality and some being that first has not even been shown to be real and second is outside of our known shared reality. Most atheists I have met have really high moral standards. I know I do.
finalfantasy8911 Because that would be intellectually dishonest. Not all of any group is going to be anything.
Great video Matt, I've found that many theist I debate retort like a child and force us to constantly define what a moral is even though they accept the definition I lay out. They are obsessed with subjective opinion verses reality.
I try to tell them how we can make comparisons of different worlds where the difference between one world is an action is deemed moral or immoral. We can plug in the information about who is affected by these actions and what the effects are then compare the models to see which one provides the better universe to live in. This is a way that we can determine our morals in terms of our definition we agreed on.
But that often doesn't work because they just claim I must have some sort of external anchor point. They can't explain why except for saying that my opinion would be subjective. It can be frustrating.
The problem is that the morals as a conduct for the benefit of society is valid because it benefits the individual. So, the major consideration for the individual is himself not the rules nor society. The rules and society matter only insofar as they are relevant to the individual. The question then remains, why act ethically/morally when it benefits the individual more to act differently?
Very cool backdrop for this well constructed and insightful video, Mr. Dillahunty.
With respect Mr Dillahunty,if I have understood your view on morality correctly, right and wrong are determined by how ones actions affect other people. I think that this definition does not capture what most people mean when they talk about right and wrong.
If I were to encounter a homeless stray puppy in some back ally and then lure that puppy into my car with some treats, take it home where I torture it in the most painful and horrific ways imaginable for 16 hours straight before finally ending its life as gruesomely as possible. Further, lets say I enjoy my experience. As the only human involved in this encounter who received enjoyment at the cost of hurting zero other humans, on your view, shouldn't we conclude that nothing morally wrong was done?
If instead you conclude that this action WAS morally wrong because of something along the lines of "it caused harm to the puppy", as most of us would feel is correct, then what conclusion does your view of morality have with regards to choosing to eat meat instead of being vegetarian, given that science shows we can live with either diet, why chose the one that causes suffering unnecessarily to animals?
Thanks for your time.
I am not Mr. Dillahunty, but I would love to answer your dilemma.
First, you are assuming all animals have the same level of consciousness as humans, I agree that animals are sentient and because they have nervous systems we see they can translate something similar to what we would describe as pain or several degrees of suffering.
Now you would agree that a cow or a pig does not grieve in the same way an elephant or a dog would, so we start to clear the path to a better understanding. I disagree complete on the topic of raising cattle in a complete "inhumane" way, but that is as far as my disagreement goes.
I can understand that a cow, pig, and other animals are not self aware, and their survival instincts are the only triggers we recognize in their attitudes, and I mean, they run away from harm and defend themselves, not because they have an intrinsic will to survive, and think of if it in that way, but because their instincts tell them so.
In that regard, I can kill and eat animals for my own sustain, (which I have), with no dilemma in my moral paradigm, as long as I am aware of how the animal was treated from conception to dead.
It very much is, because it demonstrates self awareness, which is what you are trying to dispute in my comment.
*****
You are proposing the claim that those animals have self awareness.
I proposed one way in which we can determine that fact.
Now unless you can demonstrated what you are claiming I can't believe in your god.
Edit: sorry in your claim that those animals are self aware.
MrTechFox - You say that meat and animal products are not nessesary for human survival in the modern day era. You are partially correct. In the western world with well stocked shelves with imported goods from all over the world and vitamin pills to correct the absence of B12 it is fully possible to live a fully vegan life while sustaining a good health. However in most developing countries living as a vegan is impossible. The human brain and nervous system is dependent on essential amino acids that the body cannot create on it's own and minerals and vitamins only found in animal products. In short, the human body is constructed to eat some levels of meat and there is not a single native population that live off a vegan diet. However living as a vegetarian is quite possible but also has it's drawbacks for at least 50% of the population. In many cultures meat is considered food for men, making meat unavailable for women. That is one of the reasons why anemia is widely spread in these countries which in term affects the womens reproductive health and the risks of child delivery. Also the children are born anemic and because the breast milk is low in essential amino acids due to a heavy vegetarian diet these children become susceptible to infectious diseases which increases child mortality rates.
Knowing all this it is easy for me to consider killing animals to be morally defensible. However just as in killing human beings, intent becomes important. It is morally defensible to kill animal and human alike if the aim is to survive. If the aim is to gain pleasure most would agree that the same act would be considered immoral.
Things become more difficult in the case of causing suffering. First of all suffering cannot be judged from someone on the outside nor do beings feel the same degree of suffering from the same type of stimulus. How we deal with suffering is based on how we view the world and how we have dealt with suffering in the past which makes comparing suffering between individuals impossible. But non the less this is often done when viewing the world through utilitarian glasses where the action that causes the least suffering is considered the morally right one. For instance: You have a pig and your family is starving and your wife is pregnant and exhausted. You bring your pig to the backyard, feed it it's favorite meal and the swiftly club it in the head so that it dies instantly without feeling any pain or expecting to die. The end result is minimal suffering on the pigs part and maximal gain for the family who now have food to survive. Thus the action becomes morally defensible. In the another example: the family is rich but in the mood for pig for dinner because they enjoy the taste. They go into the pen of pigs, pick up a piglet and swiftly slaughter the squealing animal while still in the pen in front of the other animals. Was it is still morally acceptable to kill that animal? No, because the killing act caused suffering both for the killed pig and the other pigs in the pen without easing any of the non-existent suffering of the human family.
Matt has addressed this very question many times. It basically comes down to moral virtue vs. moral obligation.
i have problems with moral realism, even if we decide to predicate morality on what helps or harms... the lines become blurred as you realize that morals have always been relativistic...
injecting someone with snake venom is Bad M'kay.... using snake venom as a anti-venom is good....
in both cases it causes harm, but in only 1 of the cases it saves a life for a bit of harm...
there is no objective morals... even if we go with moral realism.... what is helpful and or harmful is still predicated on opinion....
lets say i have a flesh eating disease on my hand... its harmful to chop it off. but doing so saves my life.... the ends justify the means.... now lets say there was a cure... for it, but ti was not available at the time...and in this case i could of gotten it in time, but the person opted to chop it off anyway... even tho we have established that cutting it was harmful but good, is it then back to being harmful if i could of saved it with the cure?
Morals are far more relativistic than people like to admit and dwell within the grey zone, not in reality in the conceptual, the arbitrary
MORALS ARE ARBITRARY, regardless if we like moral realism or not.... thats what they are...
You are portraying it as both cases with venom is equally bad, which is false. One results only in harm and the intention was to cause harm.
The other results in some harm and a lot of good and the intention is to help.
These two are on not close on the moral spectrum, as you make it out to be.
And second, what alternative view on morality are you proposing?
MikeTall88
*"You are portraying it as both cases with venom is equally bad, which is false."*
then you misunderstand the concept of moral relativism... neither is more moral than thew other...at least inherently
*"The other results in some harm and a lot of good and the intention is to help."*
completely arbitrary and intent was ignored,,, only the act of putting venom int he body was counted...
*"These two are on not close on the moral spectrum, as you make it out to be"*
by your opinion perhaps, im not trying to be a dick here, im pointing out that where they fall IS arbitrary to the relativistic context...
*"And second, what alternative view on morality are you proposing?"*
Moral relativism...
its not useful iin every day life... and i say we should continue to cooperate using moral realism within the society we find ourselves..
but moral relativism just points out that its not that way in reality...
murder is only wrong because we arbitrate it to be.....either by law or by gods..maken' laws
yes... practically all societies have come to the same arbitrary conclusion... because it was naturally selected for by evolution..
murder doesn't help to perpetuate our species... bu it does however help perpetuate ones power over others...
why things are good or bad has always been arbitrary from place to place, epoch to epoch...
what was immoral in younder's past may be the fad of the Epoch. its all relative to the whims of man.
Ziliath
*why things are good or bad has always been arbitrary from place to place, epoch to epoch*
Then we're talking about two different things. You're not talking about morality in the sense that the rest of us are. I would argue that slavery has _never_ been moral despite the opinions of people. The opinions of what is moral and what is actually moral are two different things.
*practically all societies have come to the same arbitrary conclusion... because it was naturally selected for by evolution*
That makes it not arbitrary. Insert Inigo Montoya meme.
TheZooCrew
*"You're not talking about morality in the sense that the rest of us are."*
Actually, i am.... few people just get the concept of moral relativism...
*" I would argue that slavery has never been moral despite the opinions of people"*
Moral relativism irrevocably requires the opinions of people (or moral agents) to make a context... Slavery was good for the Slavers....it was the moral thing to do...(in their opinionated context)
*" The opinions of what is moral and what is actually moral are two different things."*
even if they are... i'd argue that there is NOTHING that is "Actually moral"... and its only the Opinions of what is moral become practiced... not what is moral...
In other words... people only practice what they think is moral... there is no standard to what is "actually moral" BESIDES the opinions of a Moral agent
*"That makes it not arbitrary"*
its still arbitrary.... the fact that it was a benefit in later generations where it was selected for does not mean it wasn't originally arbitrary...
there could of been alternatives to the rule that would of allowed for the same result and or a different result....
there is no objective rule that says Murder is intrinsically wrong, one such alternative is, if the word came tot he same conclusion that murder is fine... but do not murder under [these circumstances]... as long as there is a transition of generations, and they keep this rule... and we do not go extinct...the rule was still a benefit to the society for propagating their genes... its just slightly less fair then what we have in our reality.. but still serves the function of allowing genetic propagation... and people can still murder...
so long as our species survive, reality does not care... and in this case humanity wouldn't care either...
so if we compare this possible word to the actual word, we find that its not immoral to murder in one of them... and for something to always be Immoral or wrong, it must be the case 100% of the time NO MATTER the circumstances.
and thats simply not the case with murder...or may other things we call 'objectively' bad... making them arbitrary compared to all these possible words where a different result could of taken hold.
its arbitrary because there are many such positions on murder that if were selected would still function the same and be selected for by evolution all the same as a total ban on murder...
Ziliath
*its arbitrary because there are many such positions on murder that if were selected would still function the same and be selected for by evolution all the same as a total ban on murder*
This is nonsense, and your waffling and obnoxious amount of ellipses don't change that. The British called this "two-tonne square wheel syndrome." You're arguing that a two-ton square concrete wheel works just as well as a tire on a car because both will roll "given certain circumstances." It's just a useless deepity.
*the rule was still a benefit to the society for propagating their genes... its just slightly less fair then what we have in our reality.. but still serves the function of allowing genetic propagation... and people can still murder...*
What planet are you from?
Also, "not sufficiently negative to cause extinction" and "positive" are not synonymous. You're arguing that they are. There was a fairly recent episode of the Atheist Experience where some annoying caller was arguing that true beliefs are of no value because in any given situation, a set of false beliefs are just as useful for benefit and survival as true beliefs. It's utter hogwash.
This is very good. Although I've heard many of the topics discussed before, there were new twists that provided deeper insights into the Gordian's knot that is religion.
Brilliant.
+Matt Dillahunty it is fallacious to argue that one can derive oughts(prescription) from reality(description/is). Also life is not preferable over death nor pleasure over pain but rather these are preferred or not. In the words of Hume "Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the entire world (death) to the scratching of my finger" ( it's just unusual ). Yes it is the case that most people prefer x but that doesn't make x an objective moral ought. I would argue and have argued that secular ethics is not objective or binding and that whether God exists or not moral nihilism is the case.
Please, show the fallacies committed on this video. ... here is a "moral ought"from the "holy book" -kill the non believers, their children, the animals too; just keep the virgins-
*I would argue and have argued that secular ethics is not objective or binding and that whether God exists or not moral nihilism is the case*
So why are you still alive?
*Yes it is the case that most people prefer x but that doesn't make x an objective moral ought*
Stop conflating "objective" and "absolute." "Objective" refers to an ideal. In chess, there are objectively bad moves according to the rules and goals of chess. When the well-being of yourself and humanity is the ideal, we can indeed make objective judgments.
Matt never makes a deductive argument concerning the "ought" dilemma. He is making appeals to facts of the universe. It could be that he believes that the "ought" dilemma can be "solved" using a inductive argument rather a syllogism.
It'd be nice if you were actually accurately responding to my position, rather than what you mistakenly think my position is.
"Also life is not preferable over death nor pleasure over pain"
If that is the case, how are you still alive and not in constant pain?
There was an episode in 60 min with babies and morality. Babies young as 6 months were picking puppets that were doing morally right things like helping another puppet.
Yes, we probably have predispositions to behave in some ways rather than others, but still we need to use reason to establish morality.
14:44 "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." vs. "Do unto others as they would have you do unto them."
Great points made in this video. The one spot of disagreement I have is that I don't find the above two ways to state the ethic of reciprocity to be significantly different, because the first way seems to me to imply the second. Do you like others to treat you like /you/ want to be treated? Obviously, that is true. So, to "do unto others as you would have them to do unto you" means that you will in fact try to "do unto others as they would have you do unto them."
Specifically addressing the first formulation of the ethic of reciprocity, if you have no way to know specifically how another wants to be treated, it makes some sense to use your own likes as a rough model to try to predict another's likes. If you find that they do in fact like the same things as you, then your prediction has succeeded, and you can keep doing those things to the other person. If you find that they do not like the same things as you, then your prediction has failed, and you shouldn't keep doing those things to the other person anymore.
***** I already explained how one can derive the 2nd formulation of the Golden Rule from the 1st. However, in my second paragraph, I allude to how the first formulation can likewise be derived form the second. That is to say that, when one has no way of knowing another's informed opinion about how they want to be treated (for example, a small child or a person in a coma), it is reasonable to use one's own preferences as a predictive model and then use the 1st formulation of the Golden Rule- "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." In such cases, one would actually be violating the 2nd formulation of the GR if one didn't act in accordance with the 1st formulation.
The hairdresser example is a case where the hairdresser has access to the knowledge of another's informed preferences (i.e. I'm assuming that the person who wants a haircut is a conscious adult who is of sound mind). So, that is a case where one actually violates the 1st formulation of the GR if one does not act in accordance with the 2nd formulation- "Do unto others as they would have you do unto them."
So, I hope that you can now better understand why I don't think that the two formulations are so different, since in the two different cases discussed above, one actually violates one formulation of the GR if they don't act in accordance with the other formulation of the GR.
I think much of the confusion is that people tend to interpret the 1st formulation of the GR as a commandment that one never, under any circumstances, seek another's opinion about how they want to be treated. Likewise people seem to me to be interpreting the 2nd formulation as a commandment to never, under any circumstances, use your own preferences as a predictive model for how to treat another person. I think that it is neither reasonable nor workable to interpret each of the formulations that way, and I hope that my previous paragraphs make it clear why I think that.
*****
I see the difference that you are referring to. It's just that, because you can derive each formulation from the other, and there are situations where you violate one by not practicing the other, they are actually only opposed to each other in a superficial, at first glance, sense.
The whole "if morality is objective, it must come from a god" premise is the _opposite_ of the truth.
1) For something to be "objective" it must _not_ originate from the mind of a person, but from external reality. (Compare "I like fish" with "a diet high in fish lowers the risk of heart disease relative to a diet high in beef")
2) Morality is objective.
3) Therefore, morality does not come from a god.
It doesn't matter if God is a "super person"; we're still talking about a (hypothetical) person. A god could _know_ that something is moral just like a god could _know_ the health effects of fish, but as soon as you say it's *ONLY* moral because God dictates it or because it's a reflection of God's nature, then _it's not objective_.
Fish is healthy. Asbestos is a dangerous form of insulation. Driving with a blindfold is unsafe. Paper airplanes don't fly as far if they're soaked in water. Murder is wrong. To the extent that these are true, they are true because they are _not_ merely the reflections of anyone's character, including a god. To the extent that they are false (I'm sure that you can find exceptions to almost any rule), they're false for the same reason.
Essentially correct, but it depends on how you're defining objective. The more common definition I think most people are using is closer to the notion to it being the opposite of individual preference, so something like the rules of sports would be "objective" in that no individual can just change the rules to suit their whims. So if morality comes from God, it would be objective in that no human individual could change it. I will say that I would agree this is a bad use of the terms objective/subjective since those terms are meant to distinguish between objects and/or their properties and subjects and/or their thoughts/feelings.
It’s just when we claim there is an objective morality while holding to a strict naturalistic, rationalistic, scientific and whatever else you may call it, it seems we are just holding to something that’s simply an unfounded social construct. And it truly seems tyrannical to enforce it upon other people. Saying that reality teaches that morality is objective is exactly what theists teach. But this touches something metaphysical and transcendent. I don’t think naturalists can logically hold to it as objective truth.
I wish I could articulate things as well as Matt does...good grief just WOW 🫶🏻...you sir...I look up to you So Fuk Much 🤜🏻🤛🏻
I get a kick out of watching Matt's debates when morality comes up. Matt really caught Jay Lucas off guard in their debate when Lucas thought he had Matt by the balls and then Matt pointed out the slavery issue. Lucas' jaw dropped. Watching Lucas trying to come back on that was hilarious because Lucas was either dishonest or misinformed in his response. I tend to think he was being misleading. Matt said he would address the slavery issue in his closing. And you could tell worrying about what Matt was going to come back with messed Jay Lucas up in the rest of the debate. And Matt did come back with a great response and explained Exodus 21: 20-22 and more scripture on the issue, like the champion he is. Matt was clearly the champ and Jay was the chump. Matt's always outstanding in his debates but he was really on the ball in this one. If you haven't seen it I suggest you watch it. I guarantee you'll be entertained.
@SansDeity According to subjective morality, if someone believes something is right or wrong for them, it is subjectively right or wrong for them.
Following that logic, someone could believe racism is right one minute, but then 5 minutes later believe it is wrong and that would be true for them. And they could change their mind endlessly but it would be true for them. But that would be absurd.
I'd argue that morality is actually quite simple. Variables make it complex.
I also would point out that if morality that is not practical universal and objective is worthless and if you think that morality is that then I don't care what is and isn't moral. And on the opposite side, by realizing that morality is those things then that would make the perfect moral code the perfect legal code and the perfect way to run a government making politics, law, and ethics the same field in a rational world.
Everything is simple if you remove all the variables.
I'm really enjoying this video so far.
Hi Matt, the "color" problems you have are primarily exposure problems. Try to have a background that's in the same exposure range as yourself. You should also do manual white balance of your camera, or at least be familiar with the color-temperature settings of the camera -- don't leave it on auto. If you have as much dynamic range as you have with the sun in the background, the camera might decide that the background is the focus of the frame and white-balance for that, and then you'll turn blue by comparison.
One of the huge problems I see in moral discussions is that theists and many atheists try to take the easy way out, morality is highly situational and can be very difficult to understand. So you have the theists give the easy answer "god did it" but then you also have atheists who give their easy answer "its all subjective." I see so many atheists say this and when it comes down to it their reason is well I can't think of an objective moral standard, therefore it must be subjective. That is the Argument from ignorance fallacy. When I try to present that all we need for objective moral values to exist is a self interested social species thats survival is benefited by working together, they will start to make all sorts of attacks on it , which conflate being highly situational with being not objective. In that end we need to get out of this idea that what is actually moral needs to match the situations our ancestors happened to put neat labels to such as murder, stealing, rape, abortion and realize that that the actual moral categories that represent right and wrong are going to be smaller and in many cases much smaller subsets of those categories. That does not mean its all subjective.
I Love These Segment Formats Matt Thanks Soooooo Much Your My Hero I Have Madd Respect For You
Matt, you really picked some distracting backgrounds. I kept zoning out (despite my interest) and had to rewind and listen again because I was looking at the contour of the ground. It's not your fault, I'm hopelessly ADHD, but I thought you'd appreciate that I got at least an hour of fun out of a 30 minute video.
Edit: also, thanks for the content, it's helped quite a lot with pinning down my own thoughts on morality and helping deepen and enrich my discussions/debates with theists about morality. Which I suppose was your goal, so thanks!
If morality is linked to our well being...I can not see how you miss the fact that dietary choices do impact our well being! Is it a matter of personal bias or personal incredulity, or am I wrong?
Regarding "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you": an easier refutation is this: I want other people to give me $100 every time they see me. Do they want to give me $100? Do I want to give them $100? No to both, I'd expect the answer to be, therefore, what Jesus (supposedly) said there is bogus.
I love watching your videos, Matt. I sent you a FB friend request. I'm from KCMO too.
Humans are an animal species. Wolves, chimpanzees, etc. live by their own social moral codes. Humans do too. Morality enables us to live together successfully and survive as a species. Religions were our early means to codify ethics during the early formation of large civilizations during the Bronze Age. I would argue that they were helpful to us in the past, but they are archaic now. Our morals are a product of human evolution.
Our instincts are a product of human evolution, not morality. We also have instincts for taking pleasure in horrible things.
If you want to get the plain truth,
Be not concerned with right and wrong.
The conflict between right and wrong
Is the sickness of the mind.
-- Sengtan, the third Zen Patriarch
I enjoyed this monologue quite a bit. I don't think I learned anything _new_, per se, but I think it's beneficial to see these ideas presented in a clear and structured way such that one can see more easily how A leads to B, etc., etc.
At 13:55, you assert that children don't come with morality prepackaged, but rather learn it from their parents, peers., and so on, but I'm not entirely sure that this is true. I've been intrigued by the implications of the work of people like Dr. Karen Wynn, and her husband whose name I can't recall off hand, in the field of very early child psychology and the experiments that she's conducted which, to my mind at least, indicate that even infants have rudimentary, very black-and-white senses of morality. The results would seem to indicate that we do in fact have senses of right and wrong -- although the correlations aren't 100%, and so that leaves the question open as to whether there are varying levels of morality with which individual infants are born (and some other questions as well) -- but that our morality expands and becomes more refined (shades of gray, to continue the metaphor) over time.
I fear I'd do a disservice to their work by trying to go into serious detail here or even attempting to defend it, per se, but I would sincerely recommend at least looking into their work -- particularly, Dr. Wynn's -- unless you already have and have, for whatever reason, dismissed it or found it wanting in key areas, which I'd be interested in hearing about, since I'm more interested in the truth than I am in any particular worldview.
+Alaric Holmes
There's a fine distinction here. Children may have an inherent sense of "fairness," but we have to learn through interaction what is actually fair. That's a bit different.
Got in an argument with a pastor 30 mins ago. 45 minutes in when I brought up the genocide of a group of people that god said was okay to genocide. he told me about how many people killed in the name of atheism under hitler. Even though Stalin would have been a better example.
Thank you so much for this video! I've subscribed and look forward to more.
I'm an atheist but I have to admit that the theists have an advantage regarding the source of morality that secularists don't. Milton-Bradley is the authority for the rules of Monopoly.
jojomojojones They have no advantage. Milton Bradley demonstrabl exists and is confirmably the authority behind their games - but only to the extent that people accept that authority - you can also have house rules that are improvements and many times rules modifications are used for tournaments, because they solve problems with the game.
16:00 I heard a great argument for this. If morals come from an all knowing all good god then we would expect those morals to be the same all over the world and throughout all of time. They would be perfect and unchanging.
If morals come from people then we would start out with a set of morals that were not so great, that would leave large segments of the population (those people who have less power) to be exploited and repressed. As time goes on those less powerful people would gain more power and the ability to shape societies morals and the morals would change to the moral standards to include themselves. This would continue making moral standards more inclusive of more segments of the population.
When we look at reality we see the latter, not the former.
Just 200 years ago it was perfectly okay to kill some people, assuming you owned that person. And if you killed someone in that class who you didn't own, you only had to pay for that person, in the same way that you would be expected to pay for your friend's car if you wrecked it.
Today the penalty for killing a friendless homeless person is more or less the same as killing even a very important popular person.
That is a perfect opening title. I couldn't help but laugh.
My big issue with ALL religions is that their moral/rules/scripts are based on books thousands of years old. Less than 300 years ago we were burning witches in our high streets - the world changes, our thinking changes, our education improves yet all these religions do not change or evolve. Almost every war or major man made attrocity in my lifetime seem to be formed from or developed with religious conflict. The more we learn the less religion makes sense, the more we evolve the less relevant religion becomes but still there are tens of thousands of lives lost every year due to it. I am not religious but feel I have a strong moral compass, live my life in harmony with my fellow humans and try to enjoy the short time I have on this wonderful planet and help those around me to enjoy it to. In another 2000 years time will someone discover an old copy of Harry Potter and use it as a foundation to live their life?! Peace, respect and love to all (even the haters and trolls I am bound to attract!).
Well thought out and articulated views, Matt, but I disagree with them. Though I am probably not as articulate as you, I will try to share my perspective. For example, you start by defining morality at 1:00 as "how we go about surviving and thriving in the world with the recognition that we are going to share space with other people - that the actions I take are going to have consequences for myself an others." You also said at 1:45 that reality is the ultimate arbiter of what is right or wrong (morality). You said "we are physical beings in a physical universe that dictates what our actions are going to be as far as we can tell." Isn't this essentially a restatement of the Christian Biblical position? Doesn't the Christian Bible say that sin caused death to come into the world, and that death is the reality we all live with? "Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned-" Doesn't it also say the whole of reality was affected by the corruption of sin entering the world?
Rom 8:20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope
21 that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
Doesn't this essentially say that whole of reality was severely corrupted by sin entering the world? The Bible also calls death an enemy:
1Corinthians 15:26 The last enemy that will be abolished is death.
If reality is the arbiter of morality, wouldn't death be considered good since death is the norm? Isn't evolution dependent upon death? For evolution to progress, don't the unfit creatures have to die in the struggle for life? If there were no death, than according to evolution we would never exist, so isn't death good? In nature, doesn't death often mean that the more fit survive? Don't animals hunt and kill each other for food to sustain life? Why would death (or killing) be wrong - isn't that a normal part of reality? Don't animals rape? Are you suggesting that if humans behaved like animals, that would be moral because natural reality is the arbiter of morality?
Instead, the Bible says that the world was originally created without death, and because of man's sin, death came into the world as punishment for sin. Then it goes on to indicate that in the end, sin and death will be destroyed and the world restored to it's former state without death. Without the Bible how would we know that death was a corruption of the original design? How would we know that death was bad or "an enemy."
At 4:10 you make the statement that the foundation of Christian morality is a being outside of reality. I don't think any Christian says that, so I would call that a strawman fallacy. Christians believe that God is part of reality, but he is beyond our perception (just as atoms, quarks, and bosons are beyond normal, human perception, but are part of reality).
The "why" of God being the ultimate source for morality is pretty simple: He created us. He gave us life. As our creator, He has a valid claim on setting our standard of behavior, just as an inventor determines the purpose and acceptable use of his inventions. A car manufacturer, for example, may say "this car should not be driven in excess of 90 mph for extended periods of time - doing so will cause abnormal wear and tear to the transmission, and doing so voids the warranty." The designers know how it's built, and what it's limitations are, and are therefore uniquely qualified to regulate the car's use. Not that a new owner of the vehicle will not drive it over 90mph for extended periods of time, or that the car is incapable of doing so... but that the consequences for doing so are known and it's best for the intended and expected operation of the vehicle (and it's longevity) if the standards are followed. I imagine the owner of the car may think "No car manual is going to tell me how to drive my own vehicle! I've driven lots of cars and never had a problem... I'll drive the way I want to! This outrageous discrimination against good drivers is immoral!"
At 5:02 you give the example of the two kids. This example, I think, proves my point. The child 1 given the consequences and rewards -- those shape his reality. They know compliance with the parent's standard is reward, and deviation from that standard is punishment. The child 2 given the reasons why he should choose to comply is also given an external reality; "how would you feel; wouldn't that be a disruption to your meal; wouldn't that be something you would not like to see happen." Child 2 is being asked to adopt an external moral standard as his own. You sum this up as empathy. You then ask about the next dinner where both behave appropriately - "which one is more moral?" In both cases, the child is GIVEN a set of moral standards from their parents. However, in case 1, the child understands that the morality they are adhering to is the moral standard the parent expects of them. In case 2, the child is falsely lead to believe that the moral standard is his own standard... that it's based on their own will and desires, and not the will of the parent. If both children behave, then morality is satisfied in both cases. However, if child 1 misbehaves, then the parents enforce the moral standard with a punishment. If child 2 misbehaves according to the parents standard of morality, however, the child's actions actually remain moral even if the child is misbehaving! Because the parent has falsely lead the child to believe that the moral standard is based on on the child's own (inferior) concept of morality, the child 2 who misbehaves according to the parent's standard, is still moral according to the child's own empathetic standard. Rather than basing "what is moral" on the parent's wishes, the child is basing morality on "how would I feel." Therefore, the claim that parent 2 makes in that the child should think about what the other people feel is subjective and arbitrary. All that is necessary to change the concept of morality is for child 2 to change his mind about his own standard and what he thinks is reasonable in his own mind.
The question "which child is "more" moral" is itself a fallacy and leading. Child #2 is "more" moral by way of the fact that, now, ANY action the child takes is now potentially moral. However, Child 1's behavior is moral or immoral according to the parent's perspective. Child 1's actions will be immoral if they do the actions eliciting punishment. Child 1's actions will be moral if they do the actions eliciting the reward. From each child's perspective, that Child 1 can actually be moral or immoral, and it is now impossible for child 2 to be immoral no matter their behavior, yes - Child 2 is more moral. However, from the parent's perspective child 2 is sometimes not moral, even if child 2 falsely believes they are moral. Furthermore, the parent 2 acts unjustly if they enforce their own standard of morality upon the child, having told the child they can act according to their own standard.
Furthermore you use another strawman when you say "once the parents are out of the picture, which are more likely to behave." That might be true of finite parents and kids, but what we are really talking about is morality that comes from an infinite God. If morality comes from God, then it is impossible for the ultimate source of morality (God) to be out of the picture. He is always there, and always upholds justice in an absolute way. There is nothing that escapes Him - He knows all and judges perfectly.
So I would disagree with you on your definition of morality. Morality ALSO includes adherence to the standard of right & wrong given to you by a valid authority. However, even if we were using your simple definition - "how we go about surviving and thriving in the world with the recognition that we are going to share space with other people - that the actions I take are going to have consequences for myself an others" - I think the Christian perspective is still superior. How do we survive? We re-connect with the source of all life and gain eternal life through our faith in the gospel. How do we best share space with others? Live according to God's standards which include justice and perfect empathy. How do we thrive? Live according to the designer's specifications.
Jesus said, "All the law and all the prophets can be summed up in this: love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself." So the whole of "the law" can be summed up in 1) living by God's standard and 2) empathizing with others around you. So it sounds like you are borrowing much of your definition of morality from the Bible. Really, the only difference is that you want to be able to set your own humanistic standards, rather than submitting to an authority with a valid claim on setting the standard.
Consider this - for morality to exist is must be A) universal. B) unchanging. C) come from an ultimate authority with a valid claim on setting the standard. This perfectly describes the God of the Bible.
A) Universal; you and I probably agree, for example, that women should have equal rights as men. However, in Islamic countries they do not. You and I would say that is wrong, and in so doing we are actually making a moral judgement -- we are inflicting OUR moral standard on someone else. What about gay marriage? Many proponents say that it's wrong to discriminate against people based on sexual orientation. In so doing, they are making a moral judgement and seeking to inflict that judgement on others. We all intrinsically know that for morality to truly exist it must apply equally to all people everywhere.
B) unchanging; for morality to exist, it must also be unchanging. If morality can change, then it is either arbitrary or merely conventional. If morality is arbitrary, than it can be anything. One possibility if morality can be anything is that morality could be nothing. Therefore, if morality is arbitrary, then it doesn't really exist. For example, If republicans were in office, and they say abortion is murder and then democrats come to office and say abortion is just getting rid of unwanted tissue... has "right and wrong" changed? Would an ardent republican who believes abortion is murder change his position on abortion because a democrat was in office? If the "wrongness" of abortion changed, would it ever have been truly "wrong" in the first place? Would a liberal feminist who believes it is her body and therefore her choice suddenly change her position if abortion were suddenly outlawed, or would she believe that a ban on abortion would itself be "wrong?" If murder is against the law one day, would it be okay for it to be legal the next day?
C) comes from an ultimate authority; so who sets the standard for morality? With 7 billion people on the planet we have 7 billion different ideas of what is moral... should everyone just do what seems right to them? Since we are all equal, how can any one of us say our standard is better or worse than anyone else's standard? So it has to come from an authority. How about the majority? Maybe morality is a convention that we decide on base on majority. But then the exploitation of the minority by the majority wouldn't be wrong... additionally, the a new majority could come and change the standard of morality. So that's not rational. How about government - does the government decide? Well, the government changes, so it wouldn't be unchanging, and different parts of the world have different governments so it wouldn't be universal. It must come from a greater authority than government. So really it is quite rational that for morality to exist it comes from God -- and not just any God, but the God of the Bible. He is Universal... he is everywhere at once, and in all times. He is unchanging (Mal 3:6 “For I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.). And as our creator and designer, He has a valid claim on setting our moral standard.
So then, to me, only the God of the Bible can make sense of and account for morality in a rational way. As such, His standard is the correct standard.
Ben Guptill There's so much wrong with this, but here's the crux:
*How do we survive? We re-connect with the source of all life and gain eternal life through our faith in the gospel. How do we best share space with others? Live according to God's standards which include justice and perfect empathy. How do we thrive? Live according to the designer's specifications*
We _know for a fact_ that all of that is nonsense. All of it. There's no "justice and perfect empathy" in the bible. The directions in the bible would have us all dead within a few centuries and no progress would ever be made. You can't eat faith and thus can't survive off of it. Stop living in a fantasy world.
The worst part, though, is here:
*Without the Bible how would we know that death was a corruption of the original design? How would we know that death was bad or "an enemy."*
Please tell me you're joking. Do you _really_ think the only reason we prefer life over death is because of the fucking _Bible?_ Please get a clue.
TheZooCrew You assume because of your presuppositional worldview that those "facts" are incorrect. However, I have studied the Bible for some time now and I can tell you I have found far too much perfect justice and empathy to ignore the evidence as you have. For example, in regards to empathy,
The prophet Isaiah in speaking of Jesus said,
Isa 53:3
He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
Heb 3:1
Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession;
Heb 4:15
For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.
As to justice consider this: consider that one of the ways we determine the severity of the wrongness or "evil" of an action is by whom we commit the action against. For example, most people would agree that raping and murdering an innocent child is worse than raping and murdering an adult. Consider the action of killing; if you kill an ant, is this a major offense? How about if you kill a family's beloved pet dog? Is this better or worse than the ant? How about if you kill a Kentucky Derby winning horse? That's probably much worse than the dog because the horse will be worth millions of dollars and the horse is more majestic than a dog. There will probably be jail time involved and lawsuits. How about killing a human being? Again, this is orders of magnitude worse than killing a horse. So it can be demonstrated that the one whom you commit an offense against plays a role in determining the severity of the offense. Now, God is an infinite being who is pure love, and pure light, and good. He created us, and owns us. To commit an offense against such a person would therefore be infinitely evil. The only JUST punishment for such an offense is an infinite one.
Furthermore, He didn't show partiality when it came to His own son Jesus. He laid the sin of the world upon him and allowed him to die as a substitution for us.. thus satisfying infinite justice.
Consider the words of Jesus:
Mat 22:36
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
37 And He said to him, “ ‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’
38 “This is the great and foremost commandment.
39 “The second is like it, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’
40 “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
So ALL of the law (the first 5 books of the Bible - the do's and don'ts) boil down to these two goals.
The truth is that, despite our best efforts to choose death over life and reject God, He still offered a way whereby we can be saved. That way is through Jesus who died in order to eliminate death. Do you realize that both the righteous and the wicked will be resurrected because of Christ?
Act 24:15
having a hope in God, which these men cherish themselves, that there shall certainly be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.
So the death we experience on earth is but a shadow of the things to come in eternity. Those who believe in Christ will inherit the righteousness He gave up to die in our place... those without faith will resurrect to eternal separation from God, facing the just reward for their sin - an eternal punishment.
I am not joking about death - the animals have no qualms about killing each other, and from an evolutionary worldview, death propels evolution. If you were being consistent in your worldview, then, death would be fine as long as it wasn't YOUR OWN death. It is the struggle against all others to survive when they don't.
To those arguing kill v. murder, since when is killing in war moral? Is it murder when the death penalty is used? How about those who absolutely believe that honor killing is justified? How about euthanasia? Most states call that murder.
Saying the ancient Hebrews meant don’t murder instead of don’t kill, fixes nothing. And to discuss the issue certainly doesn’t make one side stupid.
It is almost impossible, if not totally impossible to make an objective moral statement about anything that has no exceptions.
Don’t own people, don’t rape, or don’t treat women as lesser, might be examples of such absolutes, but Yahweh has not even presented those acts as moral absolutes.
If intent matters then how does intent contribute to evolution? A deer isn't going to care about intent of a lion. It isn't going to give himself up and say eat me you need to eat too. Human beings do things that really go against population survival like risking our lives to save .
Youjin An Except saving others is helpful for our survival. Genes dont care about individuals much at all. also, comparing us to deers and lions is absurd. we are a social ape. A highly social ape.
We have cognitive abilities which far exceed those of a deer and a lion. We are able to use reason to formulate a morality. They aren't.
Keep them coming Mr. Dillahunty.
The one glaring shortfall of Matt's view is that he apparently suggests that only humans be given moral consideration when the correct and logically consistent view would suggest that all sentient individuals be given moral consideration.
But of course Matt is a carnist (not meant to be taken pejoratively) who clearly appears to have the desire (understandably to me) to rationalize that carnist belief system.
Louis Gedo Maybe if you weren't de facto opposed to carnists you'd see that I never suggested that ONLY humans be given moral consideration. But keep slinging mud and making false assertions, it's doing wonders for your argument.
Matt Dillahunty , Hi, thank you and I truly appreciate your response and I know you have addressed this concern in the past....but certainly not in any way that many of us feel it deserves.
Beginning at about 1:19 of this video it is clear that morality for you pertains only to humans as your reference ONLY "people" in your consideration.
I've been a follower and fan of you for years and I don't think carnists are bad people....simply carnism is a logically inconsistent position if we assert that humans deserve moral consideration....after all, the only rational reason one could assert that is based on the fact that the humans we offer consideration to are sentient.
Well, humans aren't the only species of animal that are sentient and further absurd rationalizations such as 'in group tho' aren't valid because we'd reject that in the context of the human species of animal.
I wonder what Dillahunty's position is on Christopher Hitchens who believed that morality is innate.
Christopher Hitchens "I think one must repudiate the claim that one does not have this moral discrimination innately"
th-cam.com/video/kS9cw2pb0ok/w-d-xo.html at 6:05
He says that nearly all people have the instinct to go save a child to be hit by a car.
th-cam.com/video/iG-JLmc4Krw/w-d-xo.html at :30
Saying that believers believe that absolute moral does not depend on circumstances is using a very manipulative argument. To consider a moral situation in the most accurate possible way you may need to have an absolute knowledge of the event. Believers do not believe that killing someone is wrong. The morality of killing someone may depend on the circumstances and once you have a perfect knowledge of those circumstances the act can be morally asses. Not every case of what is right and wrong is equally complex. If you consider a case in which a person that is not mentally sick rapes people just because that person wants to get pleasure out of it, we don't need more information to know that that behavior is morally wrong.