Re: Where Do Darwinist Atheists Get Their Moral Values?

"Sound of Trumpet" <soundoftrumpet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:62ae9456-ccf6-4ac3-85a1-2c5d3a504dbd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
http://atheismisdead.blogspot.com/2008/04/new-atheists-make-huge-mistake.html
>
>
> Wednesday, April 23, 2008
>
> New atheists make a huge ethical mistake
>
> It seems quite popular now for new atheists to insist that one cannot
> jump from 'is' to 'ought'. For example, if a professional historian
> claims that what Hitler did was influenced by underlying Darwinian
> principles, the atheist will be quick to point out that those
> "Darwinian principles" are merely descriptive, i.e. they only tell us
> what is the case. But, we are assured by the atheist, the same
> principles do not imply anything prescriptive, i.e. they don't tell us
> what ought to be the case. So Richard Dawkins:


Kant said this over 2 centuries ago. Nothing new.

> I have often said before, as a scientist I am a passionate Darwinian.
> But as a citizen and a human being, I want to construct a society
> which is about as un-Darwinian as we can make it. I approve of looking
> after the poor (very un-Darwinian). I approve of universal medical
> care (very un-Darwinian). It is one of the classic philosophical
> fallacies to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'.
>
> On this point, theists should wholeheartedly agree with atheists. You
> cannot infer an 'ought' from an 'is'. And this is precisely one of the
> troubling metaethical problems for atheistic morality.

No , it is not. Theists can't either.
>
> Assume (per impossibile) that atheistic naturalism is true. Assume,
> furthermore, that one can't infer an 'ought' from an 'is'. (Richard
> Dawkins and many other atheists should grant both of these
> assumptions.) Given our second assumption, there is no description of
> anything in the natural world from which we can infer an 'ought'. And
> given our first assumption, there is nothing that exists over and
> above the natural world; the natural world is all that there is. It
> follows logically that, for any action you care to pick, there's no
> description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer
> that one ought to refrain from performing that action. Add a further
> uncontroversial assumption: an action is permissible if and only if
> it's not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that
> action. (This is just the standard inferential scheme for formal
> deontic logic.) We've conformed to standard principles and inference
> rules of logic and we've started out with assumptions that atheists
> have conceded in print. And yet we reach the absurd conclusion:
> therefore, for any action you care to pick, it's permissible to
> perform that action. If you'd like, you can take this as the meat
> behind the slogan 'if atheism is true, all things are permitted'. For
> example if atheism is true, every action Hitler performed was
> permissible. Many atheists don't like this consequence of their
> worldview. But they cannot escape it and insist that they are being
> logical at the same time.

Are u really this thick?

> Now, we all know that at least some actions are really not permissible
> (for example, racist actions).

Hold your horses. The bible is a manual of racism. It encourages racism. 
Remember Jesus calling gentiles "dogs"? And anyway, how do you conclude
that 
racist actions are not permissible? If you can draw that conclusion so can

an atheist.

>Since the conclusion of the argument
> denies this, there must be a problem somewhere in the argument. Could
> the argument be invalid? No. The argument has not violated a single
> rule of logic and all inferences were made explicit. Thus we are
> forced to deny the truth of one of the assumptions we started out
> with. That means we either deny atheistic naturalism or (the more
> intuitively appealing) principle that one can't infer 'ought' from
> 'is'. I know which one I'd deny.

Gosh, what a load of bollocks.