<p>i think this debate had been settled some time ago, no? this:</p>
<p>secular ethics don’t claim to have the truth. it’s a framework to determine how to live, based on personal choices to each individual’s liking, not a set of claims that are ‘true’. this cannot be scientifically falsified, because it does not claim to be true. i have too many times said that I do not claim to have absolute truth or am right about my morals. I just have personal choices that are not truth claims.</p>
<p>religious ethics claim to have the truth. it’s a guide about how to live according to god’s will, and is based on faith, which is scientifically not verified. therefore, religious ethics are faith-based while claiming to be fact, and scientifically invalid.</p>
<p>noimagination, my adherence, or lack thereof, to my concepts have naught to do with this conclusion, no? so can we just agree on this and let this thread go to die? or ignore me, at least?</p>
<p>edit:
neither statement, however, is fact. what a wise statement indeed.</p>
<p>I’m not sure religious ethics necessarily care about scientific validity, though. I’m not sure what the point of your assault on religious ethics is anymore.</p>
<p>i’m still confused. your belief in there not being an absolute moral system is scientifically not verified either. furthermore, it is the type of belief that can’t be scientifically verified or disproven–how do you propose that we measure such a thing?</p>
<p>why should i be compelled to reject an absolute moral system?</p>
So, we evaluate actions based on their consequences. Return to standard util calculus.</p>
<p>@pkmntrainerharry: Don’t worry about the prisoners. I’ll say it more directly: your statements seem hypocritical. Here’s what I’m hearing (correct me if I’m wrong):</p>
<p>‘Morality is subjective, and we should not apply our moral beliefs to others as facts.’</p>
<p>You say that it’s wrong for religious individuals to state their views as fact, and in doing so state your own views as fact. If your morals don’t apply to others, who are you to say that religious people can’t apply their morals to others?</p>
<p>If you are referring to the feasibility/benefits of the incarceration of the rapist, I suppose so (though I probably missed something in the thread since I don’t understand the relevance of that statement).</p>
<p>EDIT: I misunderstood what ‘util calculus’ meant. </p>
<p>I am in no way saying you can evaluate the morality of an action based on the effects: I even stated that everyone is entitled to their own version of morality. There is no moral judgement involved in the incarceration, in what I said. The rapist is simply jailed to prevent the rape from re-occurring (at least, ideally).</p>
<p>the feeling i got when pkmntrainerharry and i talked past each other for a while was that this sort of thing wasn’t a normative statement, but was a question of whether absolute morality exists or not (is this a silly distinction?). he believes that it doesn’t exist, so religious people are incorrect. this allows you to sidestep making a moral judgment, but maybe it is just one is disguise.</p>
<p>although i should let pkmntrainerharry respond instead of putting words in his mouth</p>
<p>Pkmn, I’ve agreed with many of your viewpoints, and tried to clarify them to others, but this statement is incredibly obtuse. </p>
<p>You’re driving people who don’t define “religious ethics” in a narrow-minded sense insane, and we all agree people who claim unverified facts to be scientific truths are full of it. This is not what religious people do as a rule, and in fact, those who do are living with an inconsistent faith. </p>
<p>And <<religious ethics are faith-based while claiming to be fact, and scientifically invalid>> seems not to understand that science is about observation of (typically) physical, but always observable, phenomena, whereas ethics is about a consistent philosophy of life based on your own value of distributing some kind of “Happiness.” </p>
<p>In fact, religious folk REFUSE to give “God” a physical form quite frequently, and like to believe “God” so-to-speak is revealed in different ways, and many Christian writings say that one cannot describe this “God” except by analogy. There is nothing to scientifically verify. It is more how different people conceptualize the same notion of correct living, “correct” with respect to your own viewpoint in fact. Scientific approaches can serve as a way of studying whether people’s ultimate interpretations of the religious texts are consistent, namely through observation and subsequent inquiry. This is different from the purpose of the religious ethics themselves.</p>
<p>Misplaced/inconsistent faith and bigotry is not the same as consistent faith. There’s no point labeling something stupid as “religion” and then refuting it under the sweeping name of religion, when all you’re going to get is people who dislike your narrow assignment of meaning to words.</p>
ah, i see… “your view that there is no absolute moral system is just another belief. prove it”
it’s like “you can’t prove there is no god, therefore you can’t say god doesn’t exist.”</p>
<p>an absolute moral system can, in fact, be verified scientifically: e.g. god himself comes down to earth and dictates morality to all humans. or god sends gold plates via AngelMail™ to every country leader on earth with ‘the constitution of heaven’. or an animal’s dna is found which code can be deciphered into codes of morality. who can then, deny, there is an absolute morality?</p>
<h1>i’m not saying you must reject an absolute moral system—i’m saying it is not fact. just like “god exists” cannot be a fact but an article of faith unless you have evidence. so is an absolute moral system an article of faith and not fact unless you have evidence.</h1>
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</p>
<h1>see above. saying it’s wrong for them to state their views as fact isn’t about morals, it’s about distinguishing fact from faith.</h1>
<p>
i don’t think that’s what most religious people think… if you’re getting at something that’s “correct” w.r.t. your own viewpoint, then they are not claiming absolute morality…</p>
polls suggesting that half of all americans reject evolution, i.e. are creationists (theistic evolution is classified as accepting evolution) suggest that that’s not what the majority of american christians do… even by your definition, at least about half of all americans are ‘full of it’.</p>
<p>your beliefs on morals and other things too are something that is assumed. please don’t say that they are scientifically verified because they aren’t and won’t ever be. saying that reveals a huge misunderstanding of the role and place of science.</p>
<p>haha. okay, dude who’s so humble as to not assume there is no santa and no leprechauns.</p>
<p>how inane it is to reject santa, for there is no way to ever scientifically verify his non-existence! how pompous it is, to refuse the magic of the leprechaun with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, just because there is no evidence!</p>
<p>sarcasm aside, you’re the one who don’t understand how science works. my ‘belief’ that ‘there is no absolute morality’ is exactly how science works:</p>
<p>One can never, ever, ever, EVER, prove non-existence. In science, a thing or idea is in the state of non-existence (it ain’t real) until sufficient evidence exists to support the theory that it does, in fact, exist.</p>
<p>I’m not sure that science is in the business of discussing whether things “exist.” This is in the realm of metaphysics, which lies outside the bounds of science. The scientific method was not made to be applied to validating a metaphysics. One can say that empirically there is no evidence for the existence of God, absolute morals, whatever. That’s fine. But don’t translate that into meaning that saying these things exist is not a “fact”.</p>
<p>PTH, I’d reccomend trying to argue with Sithis as well because he’s saying, in a more sophisticated language, what i’m trying to say.</p>
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<p>this isn’t how science works though. let’s put aside the fact that an absolute morality isn’t something that can be sensed, measured, observed, whatever. this is a huge impediment to applying science to whether or not an absolute morality exists, but again, whatever.</p>
<p>when there is insufficient evidence for something, scientists don’t say outright ‘this object doesn’t exist’, but instead say, ‘well, we haven’t found such a thing, so we won’t account for it in our theory.’</p>
<p>an interesting thought: did the electron come into existence from the state of non-existence right after its discovery? did matter start behaving like waves only after the electron diffraction experiment was performed and the theory of quantum mechanics was formalized? etc etc . . .</p>
how not so? does that mean it is not valid to say “that santa claus exists is not a fact”?</p>
<p>
no. it was always that way. only we didn’t know it and it wasn’t theorized. once it was theorized, scientists were able to find evidence that supports it (in fact, the scientists could formulate a theory because of the observation they made), and it becomes science. on the other hand, the idea of god/absolute morality/santa have been theorized—since forever, even—yet are still unable to find evidence to back them up.</p>
<p>in fact, “having been theorized but remaining without evidence” is characteristic of many claims that are not fact, such as creationism, the theory that vaccines cause autism, ESP, astrology, alien abductions, etc. ‘absolute morality’, ‘god’, and ‘santa’ are just a few things along that line.</p>
<p>let’s see the case of autism-causing vaccines. studies have repeatedly failed to demonstrate that a link “exists” between vaccines and autism. is it outside the domain of science to say “no link exists between vaccines and autism”?</p>
<p>this is how science works:
observation–>theory–>verification/falsification–>SCIENCE!</p>
<p>this is how god/absolute morality/any propositions without evidence work:
???–>theory–>faith–>PROFIT</p>
<p>
well that’s a valid question, but that wasn’t what was being discussed in the first place… at least not what i thought was being discussed…</p>
<p>the point of science is not that it’s absolutely correct. the point is to have the best conclusion based on the best available evidence.</p>
<p>for as long as no evidence is shown about a claim, the best conclusion is to say ‘no’. if evidence later shows up that suggests otherwise, then science has to change its mind.</p>
<p>a person with a scientific mind would say ‘no link between vaccines and autism exists’, ‘no gods exist’, and ‘no instances of alien abductions have existed’, unless/until evidence shows otherwise.</p>
<p>of course, you can always say “i don’t know”, but if you have repeatedly tried to show that it exists and still fail, it is quite daft (and in the case of vaccines, extremely irresponsible) to still say “i don’t know”.</p>