Morality
Can any sort of morality be sustained in the absence of a divine moral lawgiver from which an objective moral standard can be derived and to whom we are all accountable? Atheist philosopher Joel Marks argues in his piece that it cannot (part 2), that the best atheists are left with is the subjective dislike [...]
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Sam Harris, in his book “The Moral Landscape”, defines good as that which moves away from “the worst possible misery”. Once we conceive of “the worst possible misery for everyone” then we can talk about taking incremental steps towards this abyss. -Sam Harris, Moral Landscape, pg 39 While listening to Sam’s opening speech in his [...]
On Quora I was invited to help answer the question “Is God the only possible foundation for objective morality?”. The following is my contribution. Yes, without an objective moral lawgiver the notion of an objective moral law is absurd. The fundamental question when it comes to the establishment of any moral system is where obligation [...]
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Blinky™ from Ruairi Robinson on Vimeo. The above video is EXTREMELY well done for a 12 minute short. What makes it even more chilling, however, is how in a recent debate regarding the meaning of life, the question was asked about making sure Asimov’s 3 laws of robotics should be imprinted in all robotics. One [...]
From Pensées 40: If we wished to prove the examples which we take to prove other things, we should have to take those other things to be examples; for, as we always believe the difficulty is in what we wish to prove, we find the examples clearer and a help to demonstration. Thus, when we wish to [...]
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In Heretics pg. 16-17 G.K. Chesterton writes: Nobody has any business to use the word “progress” unless he has a definite creed and a cast-iron code of morals. Nobody can be progressive without being doctrinal; I might almost say that nobody can be progressive without being infallible at any rate, without believing in some infallibility. [...]
The following is a portion of an email conversation (reposted with permission) I had with Dan Barber regarding the foundation for morality. Morality is only objectively grounded when you have an object to ground it upon. which object? A single, solitary human with a mind. Without humans and his mind, there is no need for [...]
If you suppose that you are nothing more than the molecules that make you up, then the only thing you can own are molecules. However that poses a problem since our bodies are constantly changing out molecules. In fact, 98% of the molecules in our bodies are replaced yearly. There is not a core of [...]
From a friend of mine on Facebook: could God have made morality different? If the answer is yes, then it shows morality is subjective because it could have been different. If no, then why not? The best way to answer this question is to define morality properly. This is a variation on the question “is [...]
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