cnn: Teacher who was fired after fertility treatments sues diocese

[Prosperity]

this is what I said:

"As far as why people do good w/o faith in God, a number of sources: imitation, reflection, experience, and a God given intuition."

that answers your question

[Passepartout]

Well hope she does sue as people that get pregnant these days get fired. As they need to sue either to get their job back or settle with them with money. Really it ain't right!

[Jumbo]

this is what I said:

"As far as why people do good w/o faith in God, a number of sources: imitation, reflection, experience, and a God given intuition."

that answers your question

My response to you meant to have covered that even that was a repetition of what I had already stated earlier in the post, where I identified that basic answer as a common response to such questions in the past (and a response I find a self-affirming argument). I guess I should have said more clearly, rather than think it automatically assumed, that I was wondering is there would be something different someone would add. I should have been more clear. I appreciate your time and effort in even reading the damn thing.

[PeterMP]

I(I sometimes suspect TB has many of his repeated and lengthy dissertations saved in doc form out of experiecne, updated and filed under some system so he can go to it and pull one out for the proper occasion :pfft:)

Hey, don't knock it. I have a file related to climate change links and studies and comments that I keep.

[Jumbo]

Hey, don't knock it. I have a file related to climate change links and studies and comments that I keep.

Oh, I'm not knocking it. I am both admiring of it and frustrated with yet another example of how I make life harder on myself with some of my choices.

I also need to thoroughly edit long-ass posts like these at least 10 times before I hit enter instead of wearing out or losing patience after 3-4 edits.

[PeterMP]

I think my response would be very close to that.

Let's pick a moral question on which you may be in position to provide some thoughts. How should we treat criminals?

We should carry out scientific studies and determine what treatment causes the least repeat offenders.

EXCEPT that wouldn't have ANY basis in evolution or science in terms of being "good" or "bad". I don't know and we will never know the "correct" evolutionary out come for humans. It might be that criminals are on the path to the survival of the human species- though I'm not sure that's actually "good". It would be interesting to consult the dodo bird

You just don't get it. Evolution, for no species, including humans, has an "objective". There is no good or bad or progress. Just surviving. What you want to get at is this behavior this "direction" is good. Long term that's going to lead you down the path of social darwinism, but it isn't real. There is no good or bad.

It is appearant, you're not going to get it in this thread and so for now I give up. I AM DONE.

Didn't expect that answer did you?

[techboy]

[/color]I'd like to get your opinion on this:

As always, I am happy to provide my opinion.

Sam Harris is a good speaker, and so was able to hold my attention for twenty plus minutes, and yet in all that time, I did not hear a single argument that addressed or overcame the multitude of objections that have been raised to your own proposed approach.

He did not, for example, in any way establish how we can get from what is (determinable by science) to what ought to be, apart from a little "it's obvious to us" type stuff for about 30 seconds at the beginning, and as Prosperity pointed out, this is something that Hume showed hundreds of years ago couldn't be done. He spent 30 seconds setting an arbitrary standard for "good" as "maximizing human flourishing", then spent 22 minutes explaining how we could measure that, but the problem is he couldn't/wouldn't give us a foundation for why human flourishing is to be considered "good", though he used a lot of non-moral terms as substitutes in an attempt to hijack the language of objective morals and duties, much as PeterMP has continually challenged you on terms like "progress" and "advancement" over the various threads we have discussed this.

Rather than spend my time rehashing all the problems with your approach (and that of Sam Harris... and many have more or less been covered in the various threads), let's go to two philosophers (one Christian, one atheist) and a scientist (also atheist) for an overview of the multitude of problems with Harris' approach:

First, William Lane Craig (the Christian analytic philosopher, of course) succinctly explains why it doesn't fly, in under 5 minutes no less.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcYUimKWz4A&feature=related

And now the atheist philosopher, Massimo Pigliucci tells us About Sam Harris’ claim that science can answer moral questions A couple of excerpts:

First, as Prosperity noted...

Harris begins with a rather startling claim: “The separation between science and human values is an illusion,” adding “facts and values seem to belong to different spheres [but] This is quite clearly untrue. Values are a certain kind of facts. They are facts about the well beings of conscious creatures.” This is a frontal assault on what in philosophy is known as the naturalistic fallacy, the idea — introduced by David Hume — that one cannot directly derive values (what ought to be) from facts (what is).

and then...

These examples could be joined by many others making the same point: if we let empirical facts decide what is right and what is wrong, then new scientific findings may very well “demonstrate” that things like slavery, corporal punishment, repression of gays, limited freedom of women, and so on, are “better” and therefore more moral than liberal-progressive types such as Harris and myself would be ready to concede. The difference is that I wouldn’t have a problem rejecting such findings — just as I don’t have a problem condemning social Darwinism and eugenics — but Harris would find himself in a bind. Indeed, he seems to be making a categorical mistake: what he calls values are instead empirical facts about how to achieve human well being. But why value individual human well being, or the well being of self-aware organisms, to begin with? Facts are irrelevant to that question.

Of course, I am in complete agreement that our sense of morality is an instinct that derives from our biological history, and that our moral reasoning is carried out by certain areas of the brain. But neither of these conclusions make evolutionary biology or neurobiology arbiters of moral decision making. Of course we do moral reasoning with the brain, just like we solve mathematical problems with the brain. Is Harris going to suggest that neurobiology will supersede mathematics? Of course our basic sense of morality has its roots in having evolved as social primates, but so do xenophobia, homophobia, and a bunch of other human characteristics that are not moral and that we don’t want to encourage.

...and from Physicist Sean Carroll in his The Moral Equivalent of the Parallel Postulate:

Let’s grant the factual nature of the claim that primates are exposed to a greater range of happiness and suffering than insects or rocks. So what? That doesn’t mean we should care about their suffering or happiness; it doesn’t imply anything at all about morality, how we ought to feel, or how to draw the line between right and wrong.

Morality and science operate in very different ways. In science, our judgments are ultimately grounded in data; when it comes to values we have no such recourse. If I believe in the Big Bang model and you believe in the Steady State cosmology, I can point to the successful predictions of the cosmic background radiation, light element nucleosynthesis, evolution of large-scale structure, and so on. Eventually you would either agree or be relegated to crackpot status. But what if I believe that the highest moral good is to be found in the autonomy of the individual, while you believe that the highest good is to maximize the utility of some societal group? What are the data we can point to in order to adjudicate this disagreement? We might use empirical means to measure whether one preference or the other leads to systems that give people more successful lives on some particular scale — but that’s presuming the answer, not deriving it. Who decides what is a successful life? It’s ultimately a personal choice, not an objective truth to be found simply by looking closely at the world. How are we to balance individual rights against the collective good? You can do all the experiments you like and never find an answer to that question.

All of these objections sound familiar, don't they?

Sam Harris doesn't (can't) answer any of these effectively, and I have yet to see you do so either. My rejection of your assertion is not, as you suggest, due to a lack of understanding of the idea. It's because it doesn't work.

I have a leaning based on it all to date and my never-ending exterminations of the matter,

I'm using you in my next moral argument hypothetical.

(I sometimes suspect TB has many of his repeated and lengthy dissertations saved in doc form out of experiecne, updated and filed under some system so he can go to it and pull one out for the proper occasion :pfft:).

I don't, actually, but I have been known to cut and paste myself.

---------- Post added May-2nd-2012 at 08:55 PM ----------

Well hope she does sue as people that get pregnant these days get fired. As they need to sue either to get their job back or settle with them with money. Really it ain't right!

Huh? This discussion is about possible foundations of objective morals and duties. If you keep going off topic, I'm reporting you to the moderators!

[Prosperity]

My response to you meant to have covered that even that was a repetition of what I had already stated earlier in the post, where I identified that basic answer as a common response to such questions in the past (and a response I find a self-affirming argument). I guess I should have said more clearly, rather than think it automatically assumed, that I was wondering is there would be something different someone would add. I should have been more clear. I appreciate your time and effort in even reading the damn thing.

I see what you are saying, though really, it would be easier for everyone if you didn't hide the ball so often (and probably save you some typing). My main concern with theological ideas is to have them be consistent. A conceivable, albeit non-falsifiable, belief is a good enough starting point for me. Because we all require SOME assumptions to think, even if we don't always recognize them. I'll readily admit that a non-falsifiable assumptions are the foundation of my beliefs. And the reason why I have those beliefs is more or less "intuition." I have emotional attachments to the beliefs, and sometimes I see them corroborated with real world events or my own gut feelings. Do some people have a higher standard? I guess. Should they? I don't know. Maybe it is best to believe in as few non-falsifiable beliefs as possible. But why be so stingy, when there are some non-falsiable beliefs that are beautiful, and consistent with the world. Believe in whatever makes sense to you I guess. Proof is too high of a burden though.

/rambling

[Jumbo]

I did edit 'exterminations' and I love the OT joke.

---------- Post added May-2nd-2012 at 06:08 PM ----------

Prosperity, I hear ya, you're extremely bright, and just know 9 times out of 10 I'm not trying to "hide the ball" or am ever even indulging some love of (actual definition) verbosity. I just have times where that's how my stream-of-consciousnesses looks and its going right to the keyboard and I run out of time and patience to re-write and edit it all out like I might in other venues because doing that for me is a process about 5 times lengthier than for any normal human of average competence :pfft:.

I try to do it as often as I can (and it's needed badly even in my shorter posts as TK can tell you), and I never exect anyone to actually read those posts that span light-years but I do write them for how that process helps me at the time.

If anyone who does read them ever gets a shred of anything positive out of them for the time and trouble it is to them, that's a win and a bonus on my end.

I also agree with your closing remarks, particularly the essential sprint of them, and often say similar things.

[alexey]

As always, I am happy to provide my opinion.

...

He did not, for example, in any way establish how we can get from what is (determinable by science) to what ought to be, apart from a little "it's obvious to us" type stuff for about 30 seconds at the beginning, and as Prosperity pointed out, this is something that Hume showed hundreds of years ago couldn't be done. He spent 30 seconds setting an arbitrary standard for "good" as "maximizing human flourishing", then spent 22 minutes explaining how we could measure that, but the problem is he couldn't/wouldn't give us a foundation for why human flourishing is to be considered "good", though he used a lot of non-moral terms as substitutes in an attempt to hijack the language of objective morals and duties, much as PeterMP has continually challenged you on terms like "progress" and "advancement" over the various threads we have discussed this.

...

1) Do not kill

2) Do not steal

3) Do not lie

4) Do not abuse

5) Do not restrict freedom.

6) Do respect

Person 1: Sounds great, I'll go with that.

Person 2: OK me too.

Person 3: I do not agree.

Person 1+2: If you do not behave, we will withdraw our respect (6). If you cross the line, we will withdraw your freedom (5).

Person 4: I am down with this approach.

Person 5: I think this is great! I totally believe this because it is Objective Stuff from God.

Person 1+2+3+4: We don't think so, but we will respect (6).

(hug)