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Haldane presents a sophisticated argument that the existence of God is the condition for the possibility of anything's having moral significance, and Hitchens doesn't have a decent response to it.

― jim, Monday, September 24, 2012 8:07 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for all the criticism atheists get for being smug, it strikes me as pretty fucking arrogant and dismissive to casually accuse all atheists of being essentially immoral. And it has the added bonus of not being any kind of proof of God's existence in the slightest.

Non-existent sky god = morality exists

No sky god = can't find a reason not to be a dick

Haldane's point is tautalogical, Either god does or doesn't exist. We still need to talk about morality and even if he could be proved to not exist what do you do then? Some ppl aren't very well disposed to being utter hellions.

also tautalogical if "Afaics, a spontaneous morality based in pure pragmatism, in Haldane's terms, would not be morally significant, but indistinguishable from amoral behavior, because it shares the exact same grounds" is true, since he's defining morality as stemming from belief in a god.

it's only tautological if you accept that morality is defined by being an extra-dimensional concept, but that's like saying what constitutes pizza is an extra-dimensional concept (which frankly I think you have a stronger argument for)

Where does free will come from if the world is deterministic? The invention of souls gives you a little wiggle room (the world is deterministic but souls exist in this extra-dimensional space so free will can slip in), but otherwise everything is determined, no? In which case any moral failing is just mechanistic - the killer can't be blamed for his neurology, etc. I'd be interested in hearing an answer on this point - or even pointed to a book or philosopher that discusses this issue.

the killer can't be blamed for his neurology, etc.

That assumes a universe wherein the important thing is blame. What if I don't blame particularly but I prevent him from further acts likely to harm and continue the chain of unhappiness?

Where does free will come from if the world is deterministic?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

Matt, I'm an atheist. I was providing that argument for consideration, not because I agree with it. Anyway, if I remember correctly, the point isn't that atheists are less moral than theists. It's an argument about what morality is in the first place, whether our moral practices track true moral facts about the world, or whether our practices such as they've evolved are just a collective game with no basis in reality. But I would have to watch again as I don't remember all of the details.

Compatibilism makes the question more complicated (by asserting various interpretations of what we mean by free will) but assuming the common definition (the freedom to act w/ choice as opposed to acting in accordance w/ preexisting material conditions) doesn't really handle the issue. If you don't believe in free will, that's cool too! But compatbilism here is more of a duck than an answer, no? xp

That assumes a universe wherein the important thing is blame. What if I don't blame particularly but I prevent him from further acts likely to harm and continue the chain of unhappiness?

So your answer is that there isn't free will. That's fine! I was asserting that to be so re atheism.

you can totally have macro-level free will in a deterministic universe the same way you can produce pseudo-random results from a deterministic process. that said, the christian thing to do is to forgive the killer.

I experience my actions as both free and falling along a moral continuum (doing the right thing v. doing the wrong thing). I don't think these intuitions about my will are compatible w/ atheism. Spitballing here but I expect atheism could allow me to experience actions as free, but not moral OR moral but not free (ie Michael's example of the killer being imprisoned for mechanistic purposes) - but not both moral and free.

Oh, boy, that book review o. nate linked to. "Evangelical Protestant believes theists are rubber, atheists are glue, and that the latter have something broken in their brains. Also, lots of special pleading! Film at 11."

I think the idea that atheists have something "broken in their brains" is too impose a materialist reading on Plantinga's decidedly non-materialist philosophy. He probably intends something more like divine revelation, which, in his infinite wisdom, God has not deigned to reveal to atheists. But I think my biggest problem with his argument is that it seems to deny something essential about religious faith. I prefer a Kierkegaardian leap of faith to Plantinga's spiritual decoder ring, distributed by God to a few lucky cereal boxes.

One nice point which I think atheists of the materialist persuasion are too quick to gloss over: if we believe that our brains were formed by a process of evolution - ie., by random genetic mutations that provided survival advantages on the African savanna - what makes us justified in thinking they are at all suitable to solving cosmological mysteries far removed from the situations they evolved under. The pioneers of the scientific revolution in Europe believed their brains were designed by God to reveal his mysteries, so they had some justification for their project. It's not clear that we still have that justification in a post-Darwin universe. Has science sawed off the limb it was sitting on, epistemically speaking?

atheists don't think they've solved "cosmological mysteries," we think that there is no evidence for God being the answer to those mysteries.

or are you saying we shouldn't bother with science at all cuz our brains aren't good enough?

I was kinda stunned at all the atheists that believe in free will back when we did the free will poll. it sorta breaks my brain.

But compatbilism here is more of a duck than an answer, no? xp

no idea. I just googled that stuff trying to figure out wtf you're talking about and found this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism#Free_will_and_determinism

I don't really get philosophy. Most of the philosophy and theology here seems to be needlessly overcomplicating things to me, so I'm sure my thinking on this stuff will seem dumb. What is morality and where do morals come from? They come from people who develop shared sets of beliefs over time through trial and error, usually as an attempt to benefit society. I don't understand how a theologian deals with the fact that morals are relative.

xp, why, Shakey? Atheism doesn't have to mean materialism OR determinism. Atheism and free will are not, so far as I can tell, incompatible on their faces without a lot of other assumptions built in.

If I were an atheist I think I'd have to be a determinist. As it is I believe almost entirely in determinism except I have this little religion thing in my back pocket.

"what makes us justified in thinking they are at all suitable to solving cosmological mysteries"

i think our brains are so demonstrably badly wired for solving global warming and vaccinating kids without fear of autism that cosmological mysteries are kind of in the "save the model kit for a rainy day" closet for now.

Strict determinism is a kind of deus ex machina. It removes the necessity to account for anything at all. Whatever happens, however it happens, it exists because it had to be precisely so from the first instant of time. Therefore determinism makes an OK ersatz diety. It certainly kills any requirement for making any kind of choice, or even asking further questions.

^^^what he said

Fancy a pint, then, Aimless?

also I have always understood "free will" to be explicitly Christian in origin (ie a concept developed to explain why there are bad things in the world/why people are capable of sin even though the world is supposed to be ruled by a loving god) so seeing all these smart people post about how they believe in free will but are not religious makes me scratch my head.

I'm in Mordy's camp in that I feel like I'm an absolutist re: determinism, but our brains are hopelessly ill-equipped to deal with the staggering forces at work and that's where spirituality comes in

it's just odd seeing people slagging off religion as a bunch of bullshit and then embracing an explicitly religious concept and its terminology.

But, again, atheism does not require determinism. Not so far as I can tell. And it also seems like there's daylight between "determinism" and "strict determinism." When I roll a six-sided die, I know for an absolute fact I'm going to end up with a number between 1-6, but I don't know in advance which one it will be, and neither does anyone else.

Wish I had a better grounding in philosophy so I could discuss this more intelligently, but it seems to me that a lot of people are positioning as opposites things that are not opposites.

BS or not, I've always been in favor of lightning staffs.

(Plus on a micro level it doesn't even really matter - even if the universe "knows" in some sense everything I'm ever going to do, *I* don't know. So whether free will is "real" or not, I experience it as "real.")

it's just odd seeing people slagging off religion as a bunch of bullshit and then embracing an explicitly religious concept and its terminology.

kinda similar to Nietzsche's point that the (christian inspired) search for truth results in the erasure of truth as a Value. (or whatever, been a while since I read Nietzsche!)

in that respect atheism as free willed and hyper-individualistic is sorta the end game of a certain brand of christianity.

I'm not saying atheism requires determinism, I'm saying it's weird to see atheists embracing a concept that is rooted in religion.

When I roll a six-sided die, I know for an absolute fact I'm going to end up with a number between 1-6, but I don't know in advance which one it will be, and neither does anyone else.

it doesn't matter if you know it or not. determinism means the result is pre-ordained based on everything leading up to the point in time you roll the die (the angle of your wrist, the force of gravity, windspeed factor, etc.), awareness doesn't figure into it.

So whether free will is "real" or not, I experience it as "real.")

clinging to your illusions eh? how scientific.

When I roll a six-sided die, I know for an absolute fact I'm going to end up with a number between 1-6, but I don't know in advance which one it will be, and neither does anyone else. Wish I had a better grounding in philosophy so I could discuss this more intelligently, but it seems to me that a lot of people are positioning as opposites things that are not opposites.

OTM. And doesn't modern science deal with some of this stuff re: quantum physics, etc?

quantum physics doesn't explain a whole lot about the level at which we experience things. there's this whole quantum gravity problem...

"a concept that is rooted in religion."

Is it? Again, I don't know enough about the history of philosophy to answer that, but it seems to me that it isn't.

Anyway, it all affects my day to day life in so insignificant a way, it seems like everyone else makes a bigger deal of it. It's the answer to a question, is all. "Do you believe in a deity?" "No." Doesn't really have anything to do with anything, nor does it reveal much of anything else about me.

Strict determinism is a kind of deus ex machina. It removes the necessity to account for anything at all. Whatever happens, however it happens, it exists because it had to be precisely so from the first instant of time. Therefore determinism makes an OK ersatz diety. It certainly kills any requirement for making any kind of choice, or even asking further questions.

We can affect things through our choices, though, even if our choices couldn't have been otherwise. And we can account for our actions by offering reasons, even if neither actions nor reasons could have been otherwise. Determinism doesn't seem to lead to fatalism.

quantum physics doesn't explain a whole lot about the level at which we experience things. there's this whole quantum gravity problem...

But if modern science is pointing away from strict determinism then how can atheism and free will be incompatible?

So whether free will is "real" or not, I experience it as "real.")

clinging to your illusions eh? how scientific.

― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, September 24, 2012 6:15 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And? Let's say I concede, "There's no such thing as free will, the universe is deterministic," where does that get us? I still can't get from there to knowing in advance what my or anyone else's outcomes are going to be. So what difference does it make if I "believe" in free will or not? Even if I don't, that doesn't get me to, say, shrugging off mass murder because it was going to happen no matter what.

"a concept that is rooted in religion."

Is it? Again, I don't know enough about the history of philosophy to answer that, but it seems to me that it isn't.

Here i sort of feel like we've gotten to that fragmented spot on the line of history where religion and philosophy and science and government are all split into (somewhat) neatly defined things whereas the further we go into the past they were joined together.

I think maybe my real underlying metaphysic is "glibness."

So what difference does it make if I "believe" in free will or not?

it totally doesn't matter! which is one of the reasons I found that poll so weird, "free will" had a lot of of vociferous defenders.

Is it? Again, I don't know enough about the history of philosophy to answer that, but it seems to me that it isn't.

St. Augustine yo

We can affect things through our choices, though, even if our choices couldn't have been otherwise.

this is just narcissism, an ant could say the same thing.

Maybe Karma should be invoked here? You have the free will to be a shit, but if you are a shit, you put shit into the universe, and then it comes back and is shitty back to you, impersonally, just as a matter of mechanical principle. If you shit where you eat, you will be eating where you shit. You have free will, but nobody wants the universe to be shitty to them, so you will still try and approach things a certain way, just because of how things work out.

But if modern science is pointing away from strict determinism then how can atheism and free will be incompatible?

modern science is not pointing away from strict determinism afaict. if anything they are desperately trying to preserve deterministic models to explain things - why do you think they were so excited about the Higgs boson?

xp

the problem with quantum physics is that it doesn't tell us anything useful about the universe above the quantum level - in fact, it makes predictions that directly violate observable phenomenon in the physical universe: gravity, light, the distribution of matter, etc. This problem has confounded physics for almost a century.

in that respect atheism as free willed and hyper-individualistic is sorta the end game of a certain brand of christianity.

ryan posts make every thread better imho

if anything they are desperately trying to preserve deterministic models to explain things

You seem to be conceding that quantum mechanics has cast some doubt on determinism.

the problem with quantum physics is that it doesn't tell us anything useful about the universe above the quantum level

Why is that a problem as it relates to the question of free will? Where does this thing called free will exist? Isn't it conceivable that it functions on a quantum level?

ha, thanks mordy! (i always enjoy your posts too)

When I was 13 there was nothing I enjoyed more than debating religion on some BBS, but these days I barely even think about it anymore. Anyway, I'm much more likely to encounter cosmic we're all connected b.s. than the old gods.