Does morality work without a deity?

[Timsup2nothin]

meta-ethics is a way more interesting field than normative ethics.

Well, hanging "meta" in front of something always makes it meta-interesting.

 

[Borachio]

I don't get it. Meta means "beyond", as far as I know. How can something be beyond interesting? Is it boring to be beyond interesting?

Hmm. Meta-ethics:

While normative ethics addresses such questions as "What should I do?", thus endorsing some ethical evaluations and rejecting others, meta-ethics addresses questions such as "What is goodness?" and "How can we tell what is good from what is bad?", seeking to understand the nature of ethical properties and evaluations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-ethics

Well, fair enough, I suppose. It gives a person something to do on a rainy afternoon.

 

[madviking]

well, additionally, if we know what good is, it helps us answer normative questions more easily.

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

Morality has its roots in biology, then in culture. Religion is culture. Religion judgement is known to be highly biased and prejudiced and limited. Morality implementation would be better without religion.

 

[Perfection]

The conceptual meaning of Murder is: "intentful and wrongful(without moral justification) killing of another living being".

Of course, whether an individual/group considers a specific "killing of a living being" to be 'wrong' (and thus qualifies as being labeled "Murder") is subjective and open for debate.

But it is the classification of a specific "killing of a living being" that may be uncertain and not whether the Murder classification in itself is considered a wrongful act or not.

So yes, Murder always carries the conceptual meaning of a wrongful act.

I was aware of the challenges you present when I made my post but didn't want to get bogged down in technicalities. I used "Murder" to mean acts generally assigned that distinction in popular discourse. In that sense wrongfulness is not simply implied by definition.

What I'm most interested in with this idea are the consequences of morality being genetic.

Morality isn't merely genetic. It's a complex phenomenon with social and biological aspects. It's in some ways like sexiness In having huge social modifiers to an instinctive drive.

Does that mean that (at least some) people who commit immoral acts are doing so because they can't help it, genetically? That people are "born" immoral? How can someone who is genetically predisposed to something be punished for following his/her "nature"?

That gets tricky! I think one of the most important teachings of Christ is humility at the difficulty of judgment. In my mind all punishment involves inflicting suffering which is undesirable (I view the desire for vengeance as a moral weakness). However punishment is useful in regulating behavior so I am tolerant of it.

more later

 

[FredLC]

Ok; today the nurse we hire missed work, and my wife is taking care of her ill mother. I am at her home, helping when she needs someone stronger to move her, so I have some unexpected free time today, and no other distractions; a particularly good position to rekindle this topic. So here we go.

I have to admit, you've taken me out of my depth with this post. I can't pretend to have good answers right now for some of your points, and you've inspired me to do seek a deeper understanding of different ethical systems.

What are some ethicists/philosophers you (and everyone else in this thread, too) would recommend reading?

I have a few responses and questions regarding several points below.

Bonus round did even better than first answer. Now the pressure is on me to outdo myself again, I suppose.

Unfortunately, I have little to offer in the way of formal complementary reading. Many ideas I expressed are my own, others were picked up reading articles, watching videos and talks both online and offline. Nevertheless, I believe it should be relatively simple to do a google search on utilitarian ethics.

I also remember reading about an ethical philosopher, commenting the Ten Commandments, saying that the most important rule that should be added is the rule that "the one making rules must never know his position in the hierarchy". That is a very functional way of making someone weight "limitation of resources" and "social justice" fairly in organizing society, because that someone will want to allow benefits for the most promising spots, but only as long as it does not screw the least promising spots. A true meritocracy, though I never saw a practical proposal of how to implement it.

I'd love to remember the name of the author. Perhaps someone else will fill in.

Resources wise, I would like to recommend the podcast reasonable doubts. Maybe a religious person will have somewhat of a hard time listening to a very critical perspective on religiosity, but the podcasters are professionals in psychology and philosophy, and they confront some pretty though topics in a humorous and accessible way.

The problem I see with this is that the vast majority of humanity is far more concerned with their individual misery and the misery of those they love than about the misery of the human race as a whole. Misery for "other people" is abstracted, while misery for "me" or "those I love" is real.

If I can borrow from an entirely different discipline - international law - this is called "problem of implementation". It was argued before in the context of creating supranational entities and/or governments, and the objection always was that sovereign nations don't bow down to external orders.

I feel the problem is similar, because while the most evident part of this problem can be solved through legislation, the moral spectrum covers more than codes of law, and a code so through as to cover all of the human interactions is not only impossible, it would end up immoral itself.

Nevertheless, I like to point out that we are not as individualistic as much of the discourse in the western world likes to point out. Many complain of the government, of other people, of constrictions of community, but still, the eremites of the world are precious few, because almost all of us acknowledge that we live better when surrounded by people; only there is no pressure anywhere forcing us to be more individualistic than we want to be, just the other way around, and that skews our perception of this duality.

I am saying this because the measures of behavioral enforcement are many; they are legal and they are moral, they are proportional to the fault committed. And even then they get gradations - from fines to the death penalty, from bad looks to social ostracism. The tools to enforce the rules are here, and balancing the proper penalties are always, again, a work in progress.

That said, reaching as good a moral code as possible is not synonymous to having a perfectly behaving society. Unfortunately, short of having infinite resources, I don't see how humanity could end destructive behavior altogether.

This sounds an awful lot like a sort of communal hedonism, although I'm unclear if you draw a distinction between pleasure and happiness. I'm tempted to argue that this would fall afoul of the paradox of hedonism, but need some clarification before I do so as I do not want to argue past you.

Do correct me if I am mistaken - as I said, no formal training in philosophy - but in hedonism, isn't pleasure an end in and on itself? That is not what I am proposing at all; well being demands sacrifices, we have to take vaccines, we can't eat all the chocolate we want, we have to stop playing and go to sleep eventually. Infinite self indulgence is destructive. Some self restrain is a path for a greater good, and it's this structural, constructive kind of pleasure/happiness/well being, that I refer to when I speak of morality being the fruit of experience.

Alright, so what happens when the desires/happiness of a "moral majority" (I regret using the term given its history, but I'm using it in a purely numerical sense) clash with the desires/happiness of a "moral minority"?

Would you say that the majority happiness should always be sought, even at the expense of the minority, as given the contradictory views the "moral majority" would be happiness for the maximum amount of subjects for the situation?

First, lemme say that, though I understand where your concern come from, because I am not from the USA, the term "moral majority" does not evoke that screwed up connotation as strongly for me.

Anyways; in the founding of the USA, there were an interesting debate between the federalists and their oppositions. Some argued, quoting the encyclopedia from the Barón de Montesquieu, that a republic was only possible in small nations, because it would be impossible to hear all opinions in a continental country.

James Madison Junior, rather insightfully, responded that, quite the contrary, in small nations a relative majority could easily unite, becoming unstopabble, while in large nations this unity is harder. Equally, in a large nation, the minorities would be significant enough to reach a critical mass that would allow themselves to be effective voices.

He was right that there is an instability of relations in large enough countries that allows for precision lobbies to be strong. That is why we hear about things like the Jewish lobby, for example, though I think the stronger expression is in special interests groups, not always with legitimate claims.

More directly to your point, yes, the majority should get its way most of the time, but within limits. Some things come in as fundamentals, and are inalienable because of human centrality. Remember my last post: society does not gets center stage in a human centered utilitarian system of ethics, what means that decisions within society are only legitimate as a function of their service to human beings.

In other words, when we debate non intrinsic, even if important, human-nurturing topics (say, will voting be mandatory or optional? Will the nation have a standing military? What is the minimum age for retirement? Will our court system have single judges or colleges of magistrates?) than we are in a legitimate realm of discussion, because all approaches have possible advantages and disadvantages, their impact on our placement in the moral continuum isn't settled, it will vary depending on the implementation, overall culture, etc..., and the will of the majority should prevail.

OTOH, no majority can decide to implement slavery, genocide, prisons without trials. Doing so hurts the fundamentals and destroys the legitimacy of the decision. I believe this already clues you in on how I perceive the nazis, BTW.

I'm fully aware of Godwin's law
Nevertheless, the Nazis are an excellent case study given that
(a) everyone is fairly familiar with them
(b) their actions are near universally condemned, and thus provide many points of philosophical common ground
(c) Nazism is relatively internally coherent

If you acknowledge Godwin, than I repeat - I already won.

Seriously now, the only problem I have with your argument is that nazism is NOT NOT NOT internally consistent. No amount of highlight I can give will stress that "not" enough. It is a mess of misinformation, logical fallacies and non sequiturs:

To name a few:

• evoked Nietzsche for the concept of superman, postulating the Arian ethnicity as so, without ever giving a reason for that postulate;

• Evoked Darwin for pretty much the same reason, with the same error in postulation;

• Simultaneously accused the Jews of running the international banking powers that held debt of Germany and ruined German economy, AND of being heads of communism - the discourse changed whether the audience was population or the heads of companies;

• Valued the initiative of "exceptional" individuals and instituted censorship and repression;

• Formally stood for law, order and family, but used mobster intimidation tactics to beat up and intimidate domestic opposition;

• Like I said before, defended the perfecting of the human race using peripheral and unimportant traits to select who was "worth".

I could go on. I remember when I read the Mein Kampf, that I expected a persuasive, if flawed, argument to see how the heck nazism ever got mainstream. I haven't found one, I still am not convinced that they ever had a shred of an argument. Logic never took place there.

So no, the nazis are not a threat to human ethics; that, I think, is uncontroversial. But they also were not consistent, by any stretch of imagination.

No, this is actually an incredibly important question for any ethics system. How do you protect an individual's or society's well-being or happiness when a different individual or group is bent on destroying it?

This brings us back to the Nazis Sure, they may not have subscribed to humanitarian ethics, but what is the ethical response to them?

I don't see a coherent answer from your system.

The problem of implementation. When an unethical person and/or an unethical nation tries to harm humanity, it is a duty of ethical people/systems to interfere, in a response proportional to the ethical mandate, from written reprimands to all-out war, whatever is appropriate to the case and its scale.

Let me bring a modern example. The last war in Iraq. I was always against that war, because I considered it started in false pretenses, and unethical (and also tragic, the first war ever to be started by a democracy).

However I could possibly have been on board for a war there at that exact time, had the goal been not to find imaginary weapons, but to free an oppressed people, and as long as it were not a casuism/arbitrarity, but part of a coherent and consistent world effort to bring the rule of law to every country where it lacks.

Sure that there are complications there; again, implementation. I don't know if I can translate it properly to English, but here in Brazil we acknowledge, in our constitution, what we call "programmatic goals", there is, issues that are pressing, but we don't have the resources to achieve yet. So they are part of programs of action, and they guide our decisions to bring those goals to reality as swiftly as possible.

So, in my system, there truly isn't the false promise of an instant paradise; there is, though, the commitment to act against actions and decisions and policies that can objectively be considered as humane scourges; and not by any means, but just through means that are themselves equally ethical.

I doubt better than this can be realistically achieved.

My question, than, is: what is the solution on your system? Trusting God to interfere?

Do you expect a deity to do everything that he is capable of? If a deity has a will or personality, he may not always choose to do what he is capable of.

Do you expect every human to always do what he is capable of?

As an atheist, I don't expect God to do much of anything, obviously.

I suppose, though, that a God that (...)

• arguably has manifested a keen interest in human morality;

• that theoretically damn us to hell based on that morality, and has his most concentrated rule, the Ten Commandments, to express a moral preset (be it good or bad).

(...)is, yes, expected to teach, and handle, morality, with a minimal spec of competence.

An amoral god that does not concern himself with morality could make sense.

However, a god that does go out of its way to handle morality, to the point that his defenders think that morality is impossible except through him, doing it half-assed as is the case in point, is indeed some über weakness to be explained by your side.

I would argue that a core assumption that goes along with a deity existing and also establishing a moral code would be that there are divine consequences, whether in this life or in eternity (if there is an immortal soul).

To put it crudely, if you don't want to go to hell you follow the deity's commands.

If there were no consequences for rejecting the deity's laws, then of course there would be no particular reason to do so.

Again, half-assed implementation. Hell is intangible. Cocaine kills horribly - more important, tangibly - and people still use it, just because the consequence is distant, while the reward is present.

On the other hand, I do hope people act moral because it's the right thing to do, not out of fear of punishment. To do otherwise is not to be moral, but to be a chained monster.

Most modern religions would say that there are explicit laws (taken from a literal "do not do this" revelation, and which aren't really open to interpretation), and that there are interpreted laws (laws based on a certain intrepretation of a holy text, and which do not have an explicit "do this" or "don't do this"). These intrepreted laws would have to be consistent with the explicit laws in order for the moral system to be coherent.

This does not oppose my argument, just reduces the object of debate. So, under this opposition, there would be a nucleus of indisputable laws that needs no interpretation, and a larger set of peripheral laws that suffer from the same "lack of authority" as a human-originated system, yes?

Only that, as I said before, there are some stances in which morality is evident; don't kill, don't torture, don't enslave, don't steal. When god's fundamentals coincides with those obvious ones, I don't see what has it gained. Assuming we could not figure these ones out is, I think, quite condescending.

Moreover, I'd argue that the moral fundamentals on the most successful religions in the world aren't up to par with even the standards that are evident in human centered utilitarianism. Take, again, the Ten Commandments. How is it that there are explicit rules for not making religious images, or not saying god's name in vain, but this moral gold standard failed to forbid slavery, or rape, or torture?

But, more important to this point, why does religious people reject those things, if they are not strictly forbidden? And before you say that these are within the second group (peripheral laws you can evolve through debate), consider this question: who commits the graver crime, a man who enslave another human being, or someone who says god's name in vain?

If you, as I expect from any normal, sane, human being, consider enslaving a graver crime, than why is this peripheral morality more important than something that the creator of morality itself thought important enough to chisel in stone?

Could it be because morality is learned from the experience that human race acquires through the ages, and religious people have as little choice in adopting this objective source as everybody else?

There are certain questions which simply do not have answers outside of a faith-based belief (note that "faith" doesn't have to mean religious).

If you allow me to dig a little deeper, I would like to establish that, to be considered an "answer", some piece of information must further our knowledge - otherwise, it's not an answer, just a response.

God is just a response, to anything, but it is an answer to nothing, as saying "God did that" utterly fails to improve our understanding of the processes behind anything.

I posted this in the forum before, but I'll again make available this brilliant Ted talk on how to differentiate good theories from bad theories:

And yet every society, then and now, has enshrined methods of removing humans from society when they contravene the accepted moral or legal standards. Members of society were subject to slavery, as a punishment.

I agree that slavery is evil, but on a different philosophical basis.

It's by erring that we learned what not to do anymore. I hope that humanity will become perfect, though I don't believe it; I wish it always were, so none of the scourges we are talking about ever existed, but see, the (false) promise of perfection is a kind megalomania found exclusively in religion. Human morality promises only to learn not to do it again.

It's only a problem if a deity does not actually exist You assume that while I assume one does exist.

If one does exist, then whether or not you believe in one is irrelevant, just as if one doesn't exist, whether or not I believe in one is irrelevant.

Unfortunately, while I can't definitively prove one DOES exist, you can't definitively prove one DOESN'T, which is why I had wanted to avoid the question in this thread as it would eventually simply take over the discussion. I admit that I was perhaps wrong in that, though, as it seems your view of morality depends on your views on the existence of God as a more basic question.

Not exactly, my view of morality is not predicated in not believing in God. I think this approach to morality is superior, and even if someday someone comes up with a deity based system of morality that is better than mine, I'll adopt what is good based on its utility and start over the improving and refining. Arguably, even if I come to believe in god won't stop me trying to improve the set of rules I get.

As to the other part of your reply, well... yes, it would take over the thread, which is why I won't follow with a response. A debate about burden of proof, viability of the secular perspective, and logical prevalence, of either theism or atheism, is interesting enough, but should have its own thread (allowing for the fact that it would be just one more out of many similar that came before).

Nevertheless, this one debate, secular morality, also happened ad nauseum in the past, and still, you took something out of this particular iteration, so, who knows what would come?

Indeed, I agree that without that assumption there is no foundation in a system without a deity. So, I actually think I agree philosophically that your ethical assumptions in a system without God are probably the best way to go.

But again, as I have seen throughout our discussion, it really comes down to your assumption regarding the existence of God, which I think is where our fundamental disagreement lies.

Not to sound nitpicky, but this system is not made inferior even if god exists. In fact, if god exists, gives us morality, and the act of following god's morality does wield better results than extracting postulates from human experience alone... aren't we, again, following experience anyway?

Just a little food for thought.

I think your ethics have an incredibly difficult systemic issue, as I've pointed out earlier in this post. And that issue is how do you balance society vs. an individual?

Thinking again on it, though, I think every ethical system battles this issue, but again, I'm struggling to see your solution.

There is no one answer,; the problem is systemic, it varies from society to society and evolves within one society as time passes.

Look, all said and done, seems to me that your issue is that you are seeking for a perfect system, that a result that does not get there seems unsatisfactory to you.

And it is unsatisfactory, but only in the sense that we should keep struggling for idealized perfection. Nonetheless, this anxiety for a flawless answer is, again, a megalomaniacal trait that derives from the religious approach, that overcompensates its own fallibility by flaunting a supposed (and quite obviously unreal) perfection.

Yes, human morality is imperfect, and the balance between individual and collective interests will find grey areas. I can name a few right now:

• Parents have the right to teach their children their values, but can they teach them absolutely anything, even immoral things? Can they cut out children from the world?

• Would you kill one person to save a thousand? And what if that one person was Einstein, or anyone else, whose contribution to the world would be sorely missed?

These are all questions to which I have no perfect answer, but you already acknowledge that all systems have this problem, religious one included.

My only response here is to point out that secular morality is imperfect, just like economy, or government, or any other human endeavor, really. It does not mean that it does not exist.

And, as a pièce de resistance on the topic, lemme point out that we started the thread in whether secular morality even exists; now, the debate is whether or not it is a flawless system, something that technically is off topic, but is also a great result for my perspective as far as this thread goes, as I never argued perfection in the first place.

Sidebar - I don't think religion will become outdated until we can definitely answer the question as to "where the universe came from."

Yeah, a response this comment will have to wait another thread in order to not derail the debate.

My rejoinder would again be that very few think of the "greater good", instead focusing on what is happening to themselves and to those they love, which would just as easily lead a good person to doing extreme harm.

Again, you've taken me out of my depth. I still see issues with the system you have supported, but I think most of those issues stem from our differing foundational assumptions. But you've helped me see some reasonable philosophical bases for morality without God, which I appreciate. You've also inspired me, like I said, to do additional digging into this issue as it's one I find fascinating.

Most modern ethical systems have educational concerns as much as punitive ones, we learn from experience, and teach by example, and hope that morally superior concepts will sink in and become intuition; The process is slow, but appears to be functional.

Nevertheless, much better than you agreeing with me, you decided to dig deeper and learn more yourself. That, I think, is the single best result I could hope for in the thread, even if in the end of the process you come to think I am wrong in all accounts.

I'll end this post here.

Big "community" fan here, but I gotta say that quality is falling since season 3 ended. Season 6 have not impressed me thus far.

Regards .

 

[timtofly]

The issue is that religion teaches that morality is access to God. That is not true. God is the access to morality. Humans are capable of being their own moral agents separate from God. This is what leads to the confusion about morality and God. God does not force us to be moral; he just allows us to be.

 

[ParkCungHee]

• evoked Nietzsche for the concept of superman, postulating the Arian ethnicity as so, without ever giving a reason for that postulate;

• Evoked Darwin for pretty much the same reason, with the same error in postulation;

• Simultaneously accused the Jews of running the international banking powers that held debt of Germany and ruined German economy, AND of being heads of communism - the discourse changed whether the audience was population or the heads of companies;

• Valued the initiative of "exceptional" individuals and instituted censorship and repression;

• Formally stood for law, order and family, but used mobster intimidation tactics to beat up and intimidate domestic opposition;

• Like I said before, defended the perfecting of the human race using peripheral and unimportant traits to select who was "worth".

These things are only inconsistency because you're introducing your own postulates. It's not a lack of internal consistency, it's inconsistency with what you hold to be true.

 

[FredLC]

These things are only inconsistency because you're introducing your own postulates. It's not a lack of internal consistency, it's inconsistency with what you hold to be true.

Is that so? Let's see:

1

a (archaic) : condition of adhering together : firmness of material substance

b : firmness of constitution or character : persistency

2

a : degree of firmness, density, viscosity, or resistance to movement or separation of constituent particles

3

a : agreement or harmony of parts or features to one another or a whole : correspondence; specifically : ability to be asserted together without contradiction

b : harmony of conduct or practice with profession <followed her own advice with consistency>

All right, this is consistency according to a standard dictionary; now let's see how these statement fare to the dictionary definition. 3 "a": (agreement or harmony of parts or features to one another or a whole : correspondence; specifically : ability to be asserted together without contradiction) is what matters to us.

- Evoked Nietzsche for the concept of superman, postulating the Arian ethnicity as so, without ever giving a reason for that postulate;

- Evoked Darwin for pretty much the same reason, with the same error in postulation;

All right; so Nietzsche argued that some people are exceptional, they can be born that way or ascend, but whatever their origin, they can become free man, Übbermensch. He never argued that either the German Arians were übbermensch, nor either that they were the only ones that could become übbermensch, but the Nazis still used Nietzsche work to justify their believes that they were a chosen race, without ever bringing up why they only could be emancipated

Similarly, Darwin argued that natural selection necessitates that only those fit would emerge in the struggle for life, creating better adapted versions of a previously existing creature. Sufficient transformations would cause a split separating a species into a different one. The process repeated until modern animals came to be. From this, Nazis postulated their own superiority, and an excuse to kill so called "lesser" species, without ever bringing up the reason for their superiority, for the others inferiorities, or why an artificial selection would have been so.

Both failed the criteria. There is no harmony of parts and they don't constitute a cohesive whole. It is an inconsistent view.

Simultaneously accused the Jews of running the international banking powers that held debt of Germany and ruined German economy, AND of being heads of communism - the discourse changed whether the audience was population or the heads of companies;

Direct contradiction. Being the leaders of international banking is the epitome of capitalistic endeavor, the shrine of individual accumulation of property. To hold true that these people are the same as the leaders of the communist internationals, that aimed to end with the system of private property is a monstrous internal contradiction on the Nazis worldview. So there, again, is inconsistency.

Valued the initiative of "exceptional" individuals and instituted censorship and repression;

Initiative and censorship are opposed values, that, again, contradict each other. The number one argument of free speech is that you have to defend even those who will say things you don't like, under the risk of inhibiting something that needs to be said.

And it can't be fixed by saying that those who proved exceptional (which were those acknowledge by the National-socialists as having opinions that had good synergy with nazi policies) were free, because not only that freedom would end with the end of the synergy, but also quite exceptional people certainly never were heard.

Formally stood for law, order and family, but used mobster intimidation tactics to beat up and intimidate domestic opposition;

Do I even have to argue that defending the rule of law, order and family values, and having illegal execution squads is a contradiction? It's true that they made these legal after they got power, but is there any doubt that they were used to enforced things that were never turned into German law all the same?

Like I said before, defended the perfecting of the human race using peripheral and unimportant traits to select who was "worth".

This perhaps isn't as obvious as the others, but I still think qualifies as contradiction. You simply cannot claim to have a scientific, logical approach to a goal - even a horrendous goal as human eugenics - and then adopt political preferences and pseudoscience as your criteria.

Now, look; it's true that, with the right postulates, anything can be a formally logical conclusion. When we are questioning the very postulates, it's more correct to speak of invalid arguments than illogical arguments.

However, consistency is a broader concept. It demands a that the postulates to be demonstrable, the connections to be sufficient and the conclusions to be sound. Much of Nazi doctrine failed these criteria.

So yeah, I stick to my guns and maintain that Nazism is not consistent, by any stretch of imagination, not just because they adopt different postulates. They err in the absolute, because they are not internally consistent.

Regards .

 

[Borachio]

Simultaneously accused the Jews of running the international banking powers that held debt of Germany and ruined German economy, AND of being heads of communism

They did indeed hilariously do this.

But it's not necessarily inconsistent unless they maintained that the same Jews were simultaneously heads of the international banks and heads of international communism. Which I don't think they did.

And even if they did, the inconsistency could have been said to lie with the Jewish heads of banks and communism rather than the (allegedly) keen-eyed Nazis themselves.

And even then, if the avowed intent of the Jewish heads of banks and communism was bringing about the collapse of Western civilization (iirc such was Nazi theory), why couldn't they have approached the "problem" from both ends at once?

However I look at, I'm not getting the idea that Nazism was inconsistent just based on this one facet. Though it does appear so at first sight.

 

[FredLC]

They did indeed hilariously do this.

But it's not necessarily inconsistent unless they maintained that the same Jews were simultaneously heads of the international banks and heads of international communism. Which I don't think they did.

And even if they did, the inconsistency could have been said to lie with the Jewish heads of banks and communism rather than the (allegedly) keen-eyed Nazis themselves.

And even then, if the avowed intent of the Jewish heads of banks and communism was bringing about the collapse of Western civilization (iirc such was Nazi theory), why couldn't they have approached the "problem" from both ends at once?

However I look at, I'm not getting the idea that Nazism was inconsistent just based on this one facet. Though it does appear so at first sight.

Fantastic that I am having to debate the consistency (or lack thereof) of nazi doctrine is this thread. I suppose it is marginally on topic, this discussion being about morality, but just so. I should have just called Godwin and said no more, this thread is a clear demonstration why that device was needed to regulate the Internet.

I am close to suggest we take this to a different thread or this one will take an unexpected turn off-topic. However, one more for good measure:

Arguing that the nazis did not specify that the same Jews were simultaneously communists and bankers, so there is no contradiction, is missing the point. Nazis didn't treat Jews as individuals, but as a massive conspiratorial force of destruction hellbent on destroying the world deliberately.

So you betcha that there was contradiction in the nazi worldview. The only reason no culprit was pointed out was because the whole of Judaism was the culprit. For everything.

Now, of course, if there were a Jewish Cabala of bankers and a Jewish communist cabinet that, working together for the same world-conquering goal, were one reveling in capitalism, the other pushing communism, inconsistency would be within them; as there were neither, of course, the blame of the contradiction indeed must fall with the conspiratorial theorist that postulated the nonsense in the first place, in this case, the nazi doctrine.

I suppose one could get to the point of imagining that there is a Jewish conspiracy determined to destroy the world through both capitalism and socialism simultaneously, and assume that there is an harmonious way of doing so despite the fierce dissonance of postulates between these economical world views, because if your goal is neither capitalism nor communism, but destruction, both can be tools to that end. A group of people wanting wanton destruction like a comic book villanous society is a crazy enough postulate that will allow any conclusion that follows.

Still, this does not constitute a cohesive argumentative whole that allows for the conclusion of an internal coherence in nazi doctrine, because it still relies on the non sequitur that Jews were in a quest to take over what they already owned, and to also destroy what they owned themselves, while accusing them of greed.

Quite frankly, the nazi view of the world was plainly fallacious and false and inconsistent. All it takes was reading what they wrote.

Regards .

 

[Borachio]

Yeah. Sure. Off topic.

 

[Akka]

the thread is simply asking whether or not the concept of morality makes sense without a deity - any deity.

Actually, I would say morality (in terms of "ethics" if you prefer) can ONLY come WITHOUT a deity.
If it's from a deity, it's just a set of command - benevolent or not, it's still just "follow my rules", which is completely arbitrary and only worth as much as the authority claiming it.
If it exists without a deity, THEN it means it has worth in itself and can be considered a valuable moral system.

 

[Tahuti]

Direct contradiction. Being the leaders of international banking is the epitome of capitalistic endeavor, the shrine of individual accumulation of property. To hold true that these people are the same as the leaders of the communist internationals, that aimed to end with the system of private property is a monstrous internal contradiction on the Nazis worldview. So there, again, is inconsistency.

Not really: In the Nazi worldview, Capitalism and Communism are both symptoms of economic materialism, and share a common worldview in improving economic development. According to the Nazis, it is typical for Jews to focus on economic welfare, whether through Communism or through Capitalism.

Nazis would like to tell you that their views are based on heroism instead of materialism, and consider them respectively to have origins in Aryan and Jewish worldviews.

 

[FredLC]

Tovergieter:

I partially agree with what you say. But I will not keep pursuing this on this topic. If there is interest in pursuing a debate on consistency of nazi ideology, by all means, open a thread.

Regards .

 

[Ayatollah So]

I'm going with Akka and Kyriakos and Perfection, here:

If it's from a deity, it's just a set of command - benevolent or not, it's still just "follow my rules", which is completely arbitrary

Cause if you are 'moral' out of expecting some reward in a next realm, or trying to avoid punishment there, you aren't really moral for morality itself.

If I say God doesn't like it when people suffer and therefore it's wrong.
"so what? what makes that true? Why does God's opinion matter?"

As far as I'm concerned. Positing a God doesn't really help the situation, it's merely a convenient point for someone to throw their hands up and quit thinking.

"Because I said so" isn't a moral argument. No matter how big and powerful the One saying it is.

Now I know a lot of Christians will say this is a misrepresentation. It's not about how powerful God is, it's about how good he is!

OK, what makes God good? If we're back to "because I said so": no dice. But if there's some particular fact about God that makes for goodness - He's kind, for example - OK that right there is the basis for morality. In that case, even if God didn't exist, human beings who are kind, would be good.

[What a God does is] Provide a convenient solution to the is-ought problem.

I don't see how. See above.

Anyone's free to throw in their opinion into the ring, that's the beauty of it.

That's an understatement. That's what makes morality work - it's a free and open forum for rationally justifying actions to each other. This ties in with some of the points Berzerker made, but I won't quote them. Better yet, it ties in with a philosopher I'll mention in a second -

What are some ethicists/philosophers you (and everyone else in this thread, too) would recommend reading?

Tim Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other

I was aware of the challenges you present when I made my post but didn't want to get bogged down in technicalities. I used "Murder" to mean acts generally assigned that distinction in popular discourse. In that sense wrongfulness is not simply implied by definition.

I'm just quoting this because, wow, that is some careful thinking. You thought about how to present your thoughts without unnecessary detours, then when someone forced you into the detour, you got out quick. I'm taking notes, here.

 

[madviking]

"Because I said so" isn't a moral argument. No matter how big and powerful the One saying it is.

Now I know a lot of Christians will say this is a misrepresentation. It's not about how powerful God is, it's about how good he is!

OK, what makes God good? If we're back to "because I said so": no dice. But if there's some particular fact about God that makes for goodness - He's kind, for example - OK that right there is the basis for morality. In that case, even if God didn't exist, human beings who are kind, would be good.



I don't see how. See above.

i didn't mean as a statement of my own personal beliefs. i understand the problems with the divine command theory (see my posts on the first two pages)

Tim Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other

scanlon is good.

 

[Ayatollah So]

i didn't mean as a statement of my own personal beliefs. i understand the problems with the divine command theory (see my posts on the first two pages)

Ah, sorry about that, then. Hard to tell the players, without a scorecard. (Apropos of nothing, here's where that phrase comes from.)

 

[timtofly]

Actually, I would say morality (in terms of "ethics" if you prefer) can ONLY come WITHOUT a deity.
If it's from a deity, it's just a set of command - benevolent or not, it's still just "follow my rules", which is completely arbitrary and only worth as much as the authority claiming it.
If it exists without a deity, THEN it means it has worth in itself and can be considered a valuable moral system.

Actually morality would be useless without a deity. If there is no God, then morality is just an inconvenience. Morality is not a set of rules. Morality is giving up our own desires and putting other humans needs before our own. Give me one reason people on their own cognition would want to be moral. Even if it is a survival mechanism, there are more effecient ways to survive.

Rules are not an evolutionary product. Rules are how nature actually works. Humans did not invent them either.

 

[Akka]

Actually morality would be useless without a deity.

This makes absolutely no sense.
Morality is not a tool, it's a concept. Argument about "usefulness" when talking about definition are completely beside the point.

Not to add that even in practical matters, morality itself is completely unrelated to utility.