Theologian John Haught on evolution, etc...

Originally posted by KellyJay
Why didn't you answer my question to you?
Kelly

Because I do the asking around here.

Originally posted by LemonJello
I've tried, but I cannot make sense of your post in the context of the current discussion. My post had nothing to do with Christianity or its role as a "factor in [our] survival". I was responding to KellyJay's contention that the theory of evolution carries moral implications.

Let me try again - although I was agreeing with you, I felt that you were being drawn into irrelevant areas re TOE.

As far as evolution is concerned nothing you do matters other than the end result. This does not mean that someone who thinks the TOE has some merit is moral or immoral or different to anyone else. KJ was implying that somehow a Christian has a 'higher' moral ground (whatever that means); or in fact as I have heard many times before here that there is somehow an absolute standard of morality. I doubt whether KJ's belief in the supernatural could allow for an understanding of the fact that morality is a personal set of beliefs.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Because I do the asking around here.

I'll remember that.
Kelly

Originally posted by Mark Adkins
I confess I have a great deal of trouble understanding your argument. It seems to me that your definitions are internally inconsistent.

If one "understands the deduction from P to Q", then (in the current context) by definition one accepts that Q not only does follow from P, but MUST follow from P. If the subject does not understand that Q MUST fol ...[text shortened]... difficult to argue that one "should" accept it on the basis of logical deduction.

My head hurts. 😞

Am I still expected to post here? I can if you'd like Mark but I'd prefer to stay out of this thread for a while.

Originally posted by KellyJay
I'm suggesting that an evolutionist can make any claim they want
not just (certain) moral claims. bbarr and I both agreed that we should
show compassion to everyone, we agreed that it is wrong to limit it
to just (the special few) no matter what the special few is we should
treat everyone equally. That said you cannot really defend that view
within an ...[text shortened]... t of truth or authority that makes a moral fact
something greater than a moral opinion.
Kelly

That said you cannot really defend that view
within an evolutionary universe and force another to agree with our
stances on treating everyone equally.

Of course you can (defend the view, that is; on the other hand, no you probably generally cannot reasonably force another to agree with you). What one can do, in short, is offer reasons that support the view. And there is absolutely no reason to think this defense will contradict the contents of evolutionary theory because, as I have said already, evolutionary theory has no prescriptive entailments. Do your best to show me how evolutionary theory itself has prescriptive entailments, and I will show you how you are either making a fallacy of the is-ought variety or simply importing extraneous prescriptive premises. It's just unbelievable how readily theists try to foist this fallacy on the atheist evolutionist. I was reading a published account written by WL Craig in which he consistently employs textbook examples of the naturalistic fallacy in reference to evolution in order to reach his conclusion that "absolute" morals are not possible in the absence of God. And this is a man who is supposed to be a Professor of Philosophy, for Chrissakes!

The
term moral fact requires something to lift the fact beyond opinoin
and if we cannot do that, we do not have moral facts, there has
got to be some sort of truth or authority that makes a moral fact
something greater than a moral opinion.

Again, secular folks have recourse to many accounts that entail that it doesn't just boil down to a matter of opinion. Why don't you familiarize yourself with some of them such that you can evaluate their actual merits?

Originally posted by snowinscotland
KJ was implying that somehow a Christian has a 'higher' moral ground (whatever that means); or in fact as I have heard many times before here that there is somehow an absolute standard of morality.

What KJ was implying is that the theory of evolution has prescriptive entailments -- and, again, that is what my post you responded to was directly concerned with. Of course, KJ does seem to think what you mention here, but this is not what I was addressing in that particular post.

Originally posted by LemonJello
What KJ was implying is that the theory of evolution has prescriptive entailments -- and, again, that is what my post you responded to was directly concerned with. Of course, KJ does seem to think what you mention here, but this is not what I was addressing in that particular post.

Yes, it shows in the useage of the word 'evolutionist'...

Originally posted by LemonJello
[b]That said you cannot really defend that view
within an evolutionary universe and force another to agree with our
stances on treating everyone equally.

Of course you can (defend the view, that is; on the other hand, no you probably generally cannot reasonably force another to agree with you). What one can do, in short, is offer reasons that su you familiarize yourself with some of them such that you can evaluate their actual merits?[/b]

Again, secular folks have recourse to many accounts that entail that it doesn't just boil down to a matter of opinion. Why don't you familiarize yourself with some of them such that you can evaluate their actual merits?

Merits is a good place to begin, what makes your view or mine
stronger on the merits if we do not hold to the same value system
to begin with? It is like currency, it only matters if it has value, if it
doesn't your merit or mine are meaningless. As I pointed out above
if evolution through natural selection weeds out that which cannot
survive in the environment it is in, and allows that which has the
advantages to continue as soon as you 'claim' your group or your
valued X is that, those you deem outside of your X are no longer
as valued and their merits are not as meaningful. The judgment
of anyone is as good as anyone else's, those that carry on do so, and
those that do not, don't and that is that. You care to bring an
argument forward instead of hinting that they are there and I need
to simply research it, do so otherwise why bring them up if you are
not going to reference them or supply some hint as to the core points?
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
The judg[e]ment of anyone is as good as anyone else's

I wouldn't say this is true. Some people's judgements are informed by evidence, whilst other people's judgements are not. Those two judgements cannot be equal, since one must be more "right" (in some sense) than the other.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
I don't believe your claim. In fact, I believe it is empirically false.

Could you humor us with a deduction demonstrating the entailment?

1) A, B
2) C ALWAYS comes immediately after A, B (if you add the C, it will look like this: A, B, C). This is given; you know it's true.
3) What is the next letter in the list of letters in 1)?


Obviously, C comes next, and you write it A, B, C. If you don't answer "C" to the question in 3) then you don't accept 1) or you don't accept 2).

It's impossible, not just irrational to accept 1) and 2) but not believe that C is the answer to the question in 3).

Originally posted by KellyJay
[b]Again, secular folks have recourse to many accounts that entail that it doesn't just boil down to a matter of opinion. Why don't you familiarize yourself with some of them such that you can evaluate their actual merits?

Merits is a good place to begin, what makes your view or mine
stronger on the merits if we do not hold to the same value syste ...[text shortened]... if you are
not going to reference them or supply some hint as to the core points?
Kelly[/b]

Merits is a good place to begin, what makes your view or mine
stronger on the merits if we do not hold to the same value system
to begin with?

You're the one who largely initiated a discussion on moral facts. And you don't seem averse to the idea that there exist objective moral facts. Let's suppose that is the case. If you hold a view that is correspondent with these facts, and I hold an opposing view that isn't; then you're right and I'm wrong. Perhaps one of us is right and one is wrong; or perhaps we're both wrong. What's so hard to understand about any of that? If you posit some claim about how we ought to live, or about what sort of persons we should strive to be, or about what sorts of things are inherently valuable; then, barring some non-cognitivist interpretation, that claim is either true or false. Again, what's hard to understand about that? Now it may not be so trivial for us to determine these truth values accurately. We may disagree, but we should try to determine which view is actually correct. That is where we can engage in the practices of justification, offering reasons for and against views.

What you want to do here is say that within a theistic framework disagreement between parties is not a problem because morals are determined by God, independently of what any of these parties think. But what you seem unable to grasp is that any atheist who holds to an objective account of morals has a dialectically symmetric position. He can say that where parties disagree, the moral facts are still the moral facts, independently of what any of these parties think.

As I pointed out above
if evolution through natural selection weeds out that which cannot
survive in the environment it is in, and allows that which has the
advantages to continue as soon as you 'claim' your group or your
valued X is that, those you deem outside of your X are no longer
as valued and their merits are not as meaningful.

I'm not following. Could you please re-state this?

The judgment
of anyone is as good as anyone else's

Are you advancing this claim, or are you saying this is a claim that the adherent of evolutionary theory is committed to?

You care to bring an
argument forward instead of hinting that they are there and I need
to simply research it, do so otherwise why bring them up if you are
not going to reference them or supply some hint as to the core points?

Secular ethics is kind of a big field, even restricting our attention to objective accounts. Why don't you take a look at the quick examples bbarr gave on page 7 of this thread, and maybe that will allow you to focus the discussion.

Originally posted by snowinscotland
Yes, it shows in the useage of the word 'evolutionist'...

What shows in the use of 'evolutionist'?

I don't mean any personal offense, but is it possible for you to say what you want to say in a way that is broadly understandable (vice my having to try to read your mind)?

Originally posted by LemonJello
What shows in the use of 'evolutionist'?

I don't mean any personal offense, but is it possible for you to say what you want to say in a way that is broadly understandable (vice my having to try to read your mind)?

Based on my unbiased analysis of the language used, snow is claiming that

the usage of the word 'evolutionist' shows "that the theory of evolution has prescriptive entailments"

I don't know what that means, but that seems to be a paraphrase of what he wrote.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Based on my unbiased analysis of the language used, snow is claiming that

the usage of the word 'evolutionist' shows "that the theory of evolution has prescriptive entailments"

I don't know what that means, but that seems to be a paraphrase of what he wrote.

I don't know what that means in this context either. KJ used 'evolutionist' first, and I used it after his lead, and in this context the word simply refers to one who broadly consents to the theory of evolution.

Maybe snowinscotland is under the impression that 'evolutionist' is in reference to the adherent of 'Evolutionism', which is a pejorative often used by creationists. That's not how I or KJ used the term, however.

Originally posted by LemonJello
I don't know what that means in this context either. KJ used 'evolutionist' first, and I used it after his lead, and in this context the word simply refers to one who broadly consents to the theory of evolution.

Maybe snowinscotland is under the impression that 'evolutionist' is in reference to the adherent of 'Evolutionism', which is a pejorative often used by creationists. That's not how I or KJ used the term, however.

Any time I hear the word "evolutionist" or "evolutionism" that's what I think. I'm not an evolutionist any more than I'm a gravitist.