I like this one: "Prejudices save us from stupid ideas."

A few comments from an athiest perspective:

"The difference between "organic" and "mechanical" in social matters is a moral one: the "organic" is the result of innumerable humble acts; the "mechanical" is the result of one decisive act of arrogance."

When OJ asks where an athiest morality is derived from, I wouuld answer that it is organic, it is based on collective experiences handed down by previous generations, it is not derived from theological or philosophical theory.

"Replacing the concrete sensory perception of an object with its abstract intellectual construction gains the world for man, but loses his soul. [...]"

Theology is an abstract intellectual construction.

"Truths are not relative. What are relative are opinions about truth."

I agree. But from the standpoint of morality, all anyone has to act upon are his opinions about the truth. Noone grasps the truth as it is. However, it is vital to acknowledge that the truth exists and to attempt to align one's opinion with the truth. The only measurement as to how closely one is to acheiving this alignment is the opinion's ultimate effect on society.

Robert:

If you family hands down an old cane froim generation to generation you may eventually get it from your Dad, but it's still derived from wood. Similarly, you want to take the morality you've been handed but deny it is derived from faith in one God.

What a great way to live a life.

OJ,
The cane comes from wood, the "made by Christians" label was tacked on at a later time.

So long as you admit the Maker.

They didn't make it, they marketed it.

La Rochefoucauld was not notably conservative in his maxims, however conservative he may have been in protecting his social status.

Robert:

That goes without saying--He made it.

Harry:

which ones aren't?

What and why are two different things. God is a one syllable word for "Because."

No, Jeff, G-d is a one syllable word for "You don't come first."

The main reason science stopped asking why is because the answer seems to come up: God.

Great post. Fascinating man.

I wonder if Salingaros will succeed in making Gomez-Davila Colombia's third largest export.

OJ:
Scientists have most certainly not stopped asking why. Wherever did you get that idea?

The only people who stop asking why are the ones who believe they know the answer.

More like those who fear the answer or fear not getting an answer.

OJ:
Where did you get the idea scientists had stopped asking why?

Scientists

Robert:

A curious question - if 'atheistic' morality is handed down from previous generations, and is determined from collective experience (not based on philosophy or theology), then exactly why did philosophy and theology spend probably 500 years debunking orthodox Christian thought?

Also, if you say that it is organic, does that mean it is innate?

"We find few sensible people except those of our own way of thinking."

I carried that around in my wallet all through high school. No idea is more subversive of religion.

Harry:

Why? Shouldn't sensible thought survive and thrive?

Jim
Bo organic, I mean that it is a combination of innate behavioral traits and learned behaviors. At a certain point of maturity, individuals are capable of taking ownership of their moral decisions, and can vary their behavior from what was learned, and to a certain extent from their innate constitution. I see philosophy as a way to articulate and rationalize the moral decisions made, but not the driving force.

As for why philosophy has been struggling against Orthodox Christianity for 500 years: for most of those 500 years, Christianity was not just a moral philosophy, but was the ruling ideology for western civilization. For the western world to evolve from where it was 500 years ago to the tradition of democracy, self determination and liberty that it exemplifies today, it was necessary to challenge that orthodox tradition.

Iris Murdoch wrote: "At the crucial moments of choice, most of the business of choosing has already been done".

No philosophy or theology is going to post hoc satisfy or explain moral choices that have already been made. Man will always try to find that fig leaf, but it just can't cover enough.

OJ:

"Scientists"

References, please. Since you have claimed all scientists have decided this, that would be a very long list.

you

somewhere today you say that the beginning though fundamental is unknowable and attempts to discern it are just hand-waving.

Orrin, Catholicism (which is the milieu La Rochefoucauld was working in) cannot allow that there can be any competitors for the title "sensible thought."

Once you admit, as the duke did, that someone who disagrees might possibly have something, religion is done for. Revealed religion, anyway. Maybe any religion.

That's just silly--the Gospels disagree. We're only human after all.

OJ:
You are right, I said that. Note the present tense. At this moment, it is unknowable.

Clearly the Gospels disagree. But even absent their disagreement, are they complete?

That, it seems, is the problem to which Harry refers. How are humans to discern revealed truth from a contradictory, incomplete source?

Other than through material means, that is.

Jeff:

Humans will never know the truth--they're human.

OJ:
Absolutely. Yet to propose a truly objective morality, you presume something which cannot exist.

Which means religious morality is unable to solve precisely the same problem rationalism can't.

Jeff:

Belief in objective morality isn't necessarily true, it just means you don't get to make up your own. You're either bound by it or accept the consequences for refusing to be. Rationalism proposes that any rational argument that can be made in favor of a behavior suffices to make it moral.

Well, if it isn't necessarily true, then it can be critiqued and found wanting.

That's what La Rochefoucauld was saying, and it was revolutionary and antireligious.

Harry:

which maxim?

So, some Church makes it up for you, and you take their word on it. That sounds like letting someone else do the thinking for you--inevitably some of that divinely revealed morality is in fact made up.

Just like rationalism. Just cloaked differently.

Jeff:

No, in rationalism you get to make it up yourself, because there's no authority to appeal to.

Rationalism isn't the point here. You claim timeless objectivity for religious morality. It is neither.

And using a one syllable word for "because" changes that not a bit.

Jeff:

Not timeless, but objective. And an authority does make all the difference in the world. It's why there's no morality without God.

oj
Prove to us that you speak for god, and we will concede your point. Christianity has put their best minds on the task for 2000 years, and the best they can do is "you have to take it on faith". Faith is the same as making it up. Faith and objectivity don't mix. Nothing objective was ever discovered by faith.

No proof, no authority.

Robert:

You make a string of fundamental errors there, but they point to why you and Jeff are so confused, so let's try to unpick them;

(1) Everything must be taken on faith. That's what the great skeptics demonstrated, conclusively. We can not ever know anything to be true, up to and including that we exist.

So the complaint of mere faith is pointless. We've nothing better than faith.

(2) However, a shared faith, handed down by others is objective. It is objective in the case of Judeo-Christian morality sense that you don't get to invent your own, you share the same with two billion+ living souls and countless dead and it has existed in all its essentials for several thousand years. The first and most important tenet of the faith is that there is a God who set the Laws that the Man He Created is required to conform to.

Note that it's not even terribly important whether there is a God or if a couple guys dreamt up the Commandments like prehistoric L. Ron Hubbards--the point is that we believe in Him and them. It is this shared belief and a general adherence to them that made Western Civilization possible.

The authority derives from our submission, not from any proof.

Now, the point I've made repeatedly--though you, Jeff & Harry (principally) wisely choose not to grapple with it--is that philosophy concedes that in the absence of authority no coherent moral system is possible. Many have tried to come up with an alternative, but all have failed. And it is not just religionists who brand them failures--philosophy concedes the point.

Your last line demonstrates the problem for Reason: "no proof, no authority". Since Reason can disproive even itself then there can never be proof and never any authority. All we havce is your eminently reasonable argument for view A and mine for view B and so on and so forth and so long as we all arrived at our answers by Reason all are equally valid.

Jeff tends to rely on utility: I'll not punch you in the nose, so you shouldn't punch me in the nose, and then we can live and let live. That's great so long as my chance of living is enhanced by the deal, but on the day I'm hungry and you have food, there's greater utility in punching than in not punching. The standard of utility is completely subjective.

Harry's more of a pragmatist--you try whatever system and see if it works. Keep the ones that do but get rid of the ones that don't. The problem here is twofold, first you have the same subjectivity problem from Jeff's world and second you build into the system a tendency to keep trying new things. We being human, nothing will ever really work, so we may as well try the next idea... Soon humankind is nothing but a labn experiment for the folks who dream up the new ideas.

Inevitably, the three of you fall back on the only other source of authority to be found in society: the State. And so the attempt to liberate Man from that musty old J-C morality leads to his enslavement in a network of laws, regulations, etc. that must dictate nearly every action. Even worse, you've cut yourself free from even the attempt to create a better world. Actions are justified not by any standard of good, but simply by the power of the State to impose them. In a democracy anything the majority approves of is "right". In a dictatorship one man gets to say what is "right". Etc.

Such regimes do have an obvious appeal to the rationalist-materialist, the physical power of the rulers is proof that they have authority to say what can and can not be done. No more of those mushy appeals to the soul and to conscience and the better angels of our nature. Power=authority=morality.

But, as we see in your protestations, neither you or Jeff wants to think that's what you want. Thus your insistence that you can derive J-C morality even without God. This is all to your credit. Both of you want to be good or at least be seen as wanting to be good. That's an excellent thing. It shows how deeply J-C morality shapes even those who outwardly reject it. Very rarely do we find men who truly embrace the notion that we can deciode for ourselves what behavior should be allowed us and they tend to be literary figures, characters in fiction (Hannibal Lecter--though note that even he is well-mannered) or characters in the sense that their outrageousness is a pose--Alistair Crowley or the Marquise de Sade for instance.

It's my personal belief that the tug you feel--the desire to be a moral being and the willingness to be bound by right and wrong--combined with the fact that morality needs an authority is an intimation of God. It is not necessary to perceive a personal God or have a religious epiphany. It is sufficient to recognize that you need morality and only God makes it possible in order for you to begin to have faith. Having faith, you need no proof. Having faith, you have your authority. You share it with your father and his father and his father and so on down the line. You share it with folk on every continent, in every country, etc. Thereupon you have the kind of universal authority that can provide a morality that can make it possible for us to build decent societies and preserve and improve our own. Whether there's a God or not really doesn't make a bit of difference. We just have to believe there is.

"It is objective in the case of Judeo-Christian morality sense that you don't get to invent your own, you share the same with two billion+ living souls and countless dead and it has existed in all its essentials for several thousand years. The first and most important tenet of the faith is that there is a God who set the Laws that the Man He Created is required to conform to."

Previously on this site you carried an article noting that essential morality is invariant, no matter the society or religion. Further, you fail to distinguish how J-C Morality is distinct in its (unspecified) essentials from whatever came before it.

From a rationalist point of view, this is evidence that a sense of morality is innate to human nature. That absolutely does not mean that humans are born good and avoid doing bad, only that humans are, in general, able to distinguish good from bad. Each religion adds its own icing to the cake, but the cake itself remains unchanged. And where religions differ significantly, say Islam and Christianity on the relative roles of Church and State, appeals to holy authority will ultimately matter not at all--that moral argument will ultimately get settled materially, assuming it hasn't done so already.

"Now, the point I've made repeatedly--though you, Jeff & Harry (principally) wisely choose not to grapple with it--is that philosophy concedes that in the absence of authority no coherent moral system is possible. Many have tried to come up with an alternative, but all have failed. And it is not just religionists who brand them failures--philosophy concedes the point."

I was trying to make two points. First, the belief that an authority based moral system is coherent is exaggerated. Second, no matter the moral system, the ultimate authority is how well it works. US society is in effect a civil religion without any central authority that works extremely well despite the virtually complete absence of coercion. And it works just as well for a Muslim as a Buddhist as an atheist.

That is an evolutionary argument, clearly one with which you don't agree. That, however, doesn't make it wrong. And history over the last 200 or so years is suggestive there is something to it.

This is worth more, but I have a busy day ahead.

BTW--that was really an excellent, thought provoking reply.

Jeff:

The essay you refer to--from Butterflies and Wheels--was simply wrong. Thus the rationalist position that everyoner believes the same thing is wrong to.

The American experiment works because of its universalized JC morality. The one epoch when state power expanded greatly was when secularism held sway, but the tide has reversed. The fact that the only morality works is the one with an authority is an argument for authority, not utility.

Well, there is the source of fundemental disagreement.

I think the American Experiment works precisely because there is no universalized J-C Morality. That is to say, no particular version of it is universal. Further, I submit that if you were to list the parts that all take for granted, you would find widespread agreement regardless of religious affiliation. The civil religion and the Christian Religion are two entirely different things.

On average, Buddhist-Americans, Muslim-Americans Catholic-Americans blinkered American Rationalists all equally buy into the same civil religion. The reason they do so is because American civil religion is largely devoid of coercive elements, leaving the people within it to develop whatever civil morality works.

Similarly, one can specify the requirements of the civil religion without invoking any particular Religion. The Founding Fathers had it right. We all, regardless of our conception of how we came to be--your God, my human nature--possess certain inalienable rights, and the society that adheres to them most closely succeeds most thoroughly.

The one epoch when state power expanded greatly is reversing is not because of some resurgence in heretofore absent J-C Morality (the ratio of various forms of non-believers is the highest it has ever been, at something over 10% of the population); rather, it is reversing because it didn't work. Welfare laws are a perfect example--if they had worked, we would still have them, and they would be a testament to Christian care for one's neighbors and the less fortunate.

But they failed so badly, and for so long, that only the most blinkered wanted them retained. Of course, any serious student of human nature--no matter their religious beliefs could have told you they would fail. But the reasons they would use have nothing to do with religion, but rather everything to do with human nature.

Finally, I would like to know why that essay is wrong. The Jews did not invent religion, and they certainly didn't invent morality out of whole cloth. Some elements of J-C morality are universal; others are not. I'll bet you would find the differences are as much the result of environmentally driven evolution as anything.

I would love to spend more time on this, but today is very busy.