Animal Rights extremist

[Bucndoe]

Dostoevsky is incorrect in his statement. Quoting him on a hunting site is a tough sell because most probably have no clue who he is in the first place.

God gave man the free will to choose to believe in him or not. To choose to do right from wrong, to choose to have faith or not, to choose freely to love him or not. All things are permitted as the choice of free will is there, even sins,  just as God is. Even though some choose to not believe that he is.

[Rusty]

2 hours ago, Bucndoe said:

God gave man the free will to choose to believe in him or not. To choose to do right from wrong, to choose to have faith or not, to choose freely to love him or not. All things are permitted as the choice of free will is there, even sins,  just as God is. Even though some choose to not believe that he is.

Yes he did.   

But regardless of which you choose, one day "every knee will bow and every tongue will confess  .  .  .  . "   

[JFC1]

8 hours ago, mazzgolf said:

Ah.. but you have now made the mistake I tried to avert in my previous post when I said, "how we come to know what those moral values and duties are is a different question - that's a question of epistemology, not ontology". You have now just crossed over into epistemology, NOT ontology.

The fact is someone may explain HOW we come to know what our moral values and duties are (e.g. in your words, a naturalist could say it is "adaptive strategies, necessary for group cohesion for a social, physically weak, and very cerebral being like a human to survive"), but that says nothing about the ontology of those moral values - i.e. are they objective and real, and if so, grounded in what?

I'll give an example what I mean about epistemology vs. ontology from a science perspective. Humans have slowly come to know about the rotation of the Earth around the sun, and about the law of gravity, and how the human heart pumps blood through our veins through experimentation and observation. The law of gravity was always there, the Earth always rotated around the sun - that is reality. But humans didn't know about these things until sometime later in human history when we gradually discovered these things. And sometimes we got it wrong (there was a point in human history when we thought the sun rotated around the Earth). How we came to know these things does nothing to explain the ontology of those things.

Now let's go back to morality. Just because you can explain how you think humans come to know what our moral values and duties are, that doesn't say anything about their ontological grounding. For example, you say, we could believe in "morals and values as adaptive strategies, necessary for group cohesion for a social, physically weak, and very cerebral being." Let's grant that for the sake of argument. Even if that is correct, that may be due to blind evolutionary processes (a naturalist position) OR maybe God guided the evolutionary process so we could slowly (though fallibly) discern what our moral values and duties are through natural processes and brain development (a theist position). In other words, our epistemological framework of HOW we come to know our moral values and duties does not explain the ontology of those moral values and duties. We still don't know who or what grounds them for us to later discover them.

This is not to say we can't be ignorant or wrong about morality, even if it is grounded in God. The process of how we came to know such things is gradual and fallible, but this is no different than our gradual, fallible understanding of the physical world around us. We misinterpreted what we were seeing with our eyes when we thought the sun revolved around the Earth. So our epistemology was flawed, but that doesn't do anything about the ontological reality of the Earth revolving around the sun. We were just wrong about it. And just as our physical senses are fallible so, too, our moral senses are fallible (which would explain, for example, why only recently many human societies find antebellum slavery to be abhorrent). It also explains why even Christians get morality wrong (even Christians disagree about some ethics - the death penalty, justification for war, etc.)

So I go back - what is the ontological grounding of morality if naturalism is true? Just because we think we know how humans came to know moral values and duties, that doesn't give us an answer. I still don't know who or what grounds moral values and, more importantly, who or what binds me to obey moral duties.

If we think naturalism provides the answer, then we will be in a sad state of affairs because there is no objective grounding - it's all subjective, person- and society-relative. For example, who or what binds me to obey moral duties such that they ensure group cohesion? Maybe I personally don't want group cohesion. That might make my life harder, but oh well, that's what I want. Who or what is to tell me I'm wrong? Hitler, on the other hand, demanded strict group coherence, and he put a government in place to reach that end goal (his charisma got millions to freely follow him; and the millions that disagreed with him, he killed). Nazi society in Germany could have had great group cohesion if Hitler would have been able to eliminate all the undesirables and those who disagreed with him. Who or what says he was wrong?

I believe theism (and Christianity in particular) is true - and I have reasons and arguments that warrant that belief. And if I'm right, moral values and duties are grounded in God and we get our moral values and duties from God's nature and commands, revealed to us in conscience and Scripture. Yes, our knowledge of moral values and duties are gradual and fallible and we must be willing to say we are wrong about certain things. But at least we have a divine standard that has been revealed to us and that should guide us when determining what morality we should follow. We have no such guidelines or "guard rails" if naturalism is true. As Dostoevsky wrote (paraphrasing), "Without God, all things are permitted, men can do
what they like."

Thanks for some cool ideas. I must be honest and say that I didn't finish your whole post because I just finished hanging a deer I took tonight and I want to be back out before first light tomorrow. 

But as an initial reaction to the first half of it and the final paragraph, I'll say that I often find the hard ontology/epistemology distinction to be overused/overwrought. For example, morals are not rocks. Nor are they suns and planets. How one comes to know a moral (epistemology emoyed) can alter iyd very shap and content...a moral (I prefer ethics) that one comes.to.know through religion takes on a more than human shape, thus changing it in it's import and form/value, since it comes from the Almighty. Yet an ethics understood to come from the human can't do that, or make that claim even as it can make others. We don't know where ethics come from. So we can only really speculate or search for clues, and that search changes the nature of the object. That's not quite so true for a sun you employ as an example, but it may also be altered by the epistemology used to know and describe it...what exactly is the perimeter of a star? And especially a dead star that we seeas still living, but can be assumed to actually be at the moment but a burnt out hulk? The star will be different according to the human interpretive stance taken in assessing and knowing it. Same is true for a species, a stand of Aspen or beech trees, and I'd ay a moral standpoint. 

I'll look forward to reading your post with greater care in the stand when the sun comes up, if I'm not field dressing

[JFC1]

8 hours ago, Bucndoe said:

Dostoevsky is incorrect in his statement. Quoting him on a hunting site is a tough sell because most probably have no clue who he is in the first place.

God gave man the free will to choose to believe in him or not. To choose to do right from wrong, to choose to have faith or not, to choose freely to love him or not. All things are permitted as the choice of free will is there, even sins,  just as God is. Even though some choose to not believe that he is.

I don't think we choose to believe in God, or not. During the moments along life's journey in which I  believe, I feel his power and the fire of the word. When I don't believe, that no longer means anything to me. I don't choose to do either. The world, or God if you'd like, sets me up and strings me up/along and God becomes real or--simy an abstract idea-- as the context.or.momwnt in life will have it. 

You may have been told that God let's you choose, but I don't believe he really does 

Did Dostoevsky believe in God?

[hunterbob1]

Holy Moly,2  guys on this site, very educated.

How do you guys write such a long opinion you speak into the computer or you type it

Edited February 17, 2023 by hunterbob1

[Bucndoe]

6 hours ago, JFC1 said:

I don't think we choose to believe in God, or not. During the moments along life's journey in which I  believe, I feel his power and the fire of the word. When I don't believe, that no longer means anything to me. I don't choose to do either. The world, or God if you'd like, sets me up and strings me up/along and God becomes real or--simy an abstract idea-- as the context.or.momwnt in life will have it. 

You may have been told that God let's you choose, but I don't believe he really does 

Did Dostoevsky believe in God?

You have free will to believe what you wish. As soon as you you say "think", you are processing to choose using the the free will given to you. Dostoevsky did believe in God and wrote about the topic. He was raised in the Russian Orthodox Church and was a Christian

Edited February 17, 2023 by Bucndoe

[Rusty]

6 hours ago, JFC1 said:

I just finished hanging a deer I took tonight and I want to be back out before first light tomorrow. 

  

[JFC1]

1 hour ago, Rusty said:

  

 

[mazzgolf]

(I do appreciate this conversation, it is fun to engage on a topic like this... and congrats on the deer... even though it died in a muddy stream and it probably sucked dragging that out )

9 hours ago, JFC1 said:

a moral (I prefer ethics)

That's also a mistake, in my opinion  Ethics are simply how we apply moral values/duties to a specific situation. Ethics are even more difficult to discern because they are situation-relative (is it OK to kill a person because someone stole your pencil? What about if someone is about to steal your child?). We could have the same guiding principals (morals) but differ on how to apply them (ethics) [see my earlier point about Christians differing on the death penalty or engaging in war]. My argument about the objectivity of morality avoids the question of ethics - how we apply our morals doesn't answer the question "are more values and duties objective or are they subjective/person-relative?"

For example, is it objectively true that "it is wrong to murder"? How we apply that to different situations could be different (which is why I think you say you prefer to use the word "ethics"), but just concern yourself with that general guiding principal for a moment -- "In general, it is wrong to murder" - ask yourself, is that objective? Is it binding to all people, everywhere, at all times past, present, and future regardless of what any person or society thinks about it? Or is that principal person-relative? If I say, "In general, I should be able to murder whoever and whenever I want" - on naturalism, that is no more wrong than saying, "In general, I should be able to eat vanilla ice cream whenever I want." How can you condemn me for either of those general principals, on atheism/naturalism?

And I'm the opposite - when I first learned about the epistemology vs. ontology distinction, it opened my eyes and made things more clear to me on this subject. I don't see how someone can answer the question "Do objective moral values and duties exist?" by explaining how we come to learn what they are. As I say, it may be true that we come to learn what our morals are through evolution, parental conditioning, and societal pressure (which I do not grant, but for the sake of argument). That does nothing to explain if those morals are objective (it could be through blind evolutionary processes, or through a God-directed process - just knowing the HOW doesn't explain the WHAT).

Quote

We don't know where ethics come from. So we can only really speculate or search for clues...

Here, when you say "ethics" I think you really mean "morals" (the guiding principals that determine how you will act in certain situations). And I would disagree with the statement "we don't know where morals come from". If the Christian worldview is true (there's that "if" again), then we DO know where morals come from. They are grounded in God - moral values are grounded in his nature, and moral duties are grounded in his commands. Ethics are simply applying those morals to specific situations. We may differ on how to apply these objective morals, but that says nothing about the objectivity of those morals. So, where do we get our ethics from? Well, we apply them to the best of our ability so they follow those objective guiding principals (morals). Bring it back to hunting - why do I agree with wanton waste game laws? Because wasting an animal (or killing it for the sake of killing it) goes against the Christian moral principal that we are to be good stewards of the resources God has given to us.

But IF naturalism is true, then I do agree with you - in that case, we don't know where morals come from. Well, let me walk that back a little. We do know. Each person has their own moral standards - they are subjective and come from each person (but where each person gets them from, we do not know. It is person-relative and they can make it up as they go if they want). Everyone's morals are on the same level playing field. You say morals should promote group adhesion. I want chaos in society. Why am I wrong and you right? Who gets to decide? The majority?  The strong? Why is that the determining factor of who determines right from wrong? Maybe I think a small minority of intelligent people who are in the top-5 in IQ should decide right from wrong (that eliminates everyone on this forum, by the way ). And note, that group changes every generation, which means morals will change every generation (and that just is subjectivity almost by definition). In the end, it is just "I like vanilla, you like chocolate" - there is no right or wrong, good or evil. If we really, truly lived out an atheistic-naturalist worldview, it would be hell-on-earth. Nazism could no more be condemned than a utopian, democratic America.

[JFC1]

2 hours ago, mazzgolf said:

I don't see how someone can answer the question "Do objective moral values and duties exist?" by explaining how we come to learn what they are. 

Here, when you say "ethics" I think you really mean "morals" (the guiding principals that determine how you will act in certain situations). ...Ethics are simply applying those morals to specific situations. 

 

Yes, I appreciate your thoughts, very much. Interesting, intense, and well-thought out. Since I both got rained and texted ("emergency" text from my son) out of the stand and want to get back as rain lets up, it gets colder, and they probably start to move, let me make three maybe too-quick points, two of them in direct response to what I've quoted above:

1) We humans  can understand or perceive something only by coming to learn (epsitemology) of it...tasting it, touching it, experimenting with it. HOW we do so alters what "it" is, whether it's our perception or our categories or our pre-existing beliefs. So if you learn of or first imprint on God through fire and brimstone vs as a loving father who doesn't emphasize the violent side, your God may change even as you may eventually find a conceptual system to integrate the both. Similarly, whether you think of a beech or aspen grove as a collection of individual trees or look underground at how they spread alters what you consider a single (?) beech, aspen, or grove or tree. Yet God is not a tree, and vice versa.  So what I'm saying would shift, i think, whether you're talking morals or Mars. Morals are not stars or moons. Yet different objects to be understood/investigated do react differently, and thus change shape, in relation to how we come to know them. My god is a loving God, although I do dig fire and brimstone too. So all ontologies eventually slide into epistemologies, whether religious belief (which IS an epistemology....look at miracles, textual fidelity, parables, burning bushes--all are symbols and signs (which langauge is too), that alert us to God) or scientific investigation (measurements, hypotheses, scales, controls, reactions)

2)  No, I use ethics as overarching approach to life and morals as specific instantiations, basically the opposite of how you're putting it. But it's just vocabulary in the end, and the diff is easily surpassed in any discussion. I follow Hegel on this one, out of convention

3) I think everything we are saying boils down to belief. Belief in god, or belief that the human associations on which science predicates itself are in some way true. Here science and religion converge nicely, because both require a jump, a suspension, and a moment of belief in the face of (very different ) forms of evidence. It's one possible reason many societies have or had no distinction between science and relgiion.  So I return to my contention that you think morals are real, ontologically given, by God because you believe in God. Similarly, an atheist sociologist would believe they're given by the need for social cohesion (social cohesion as God!) or a sociobiologist might claim they are adaptive (given by nature, or the biological needs of weak-assed humans). But if you use science vs God, the object at hand (morals) changes shape. See point no. 1. And I don't see how either side can argue they know the objective shape or source of those morals. It's just a weak, human attempt. Throwing god or science in as the definitive anaswer isn't a copout, but it's a shorthand that basically assigns a higher power of our choice

I have no idea what morals are. But I am fairly sure that whatever they are, the form they take and thus their ontological condition is a function of how we come to know or conceptualize them       Hence my aversion to ontology/epistemology divide, except as two terms that like our morals/ethics help us talk but could in fact be flipped or could also be called "green eggs" and "ham."  It wouldn't really matter, as long as we understand one another and take the time to establish that understanding without throwing hissy fits.   Thanks for your patience and care on a hunting site where we're ranging far and wide...but maybe not, since the ethics of hunting, and thus whether we shoot turkeys in trees or fawns vs. bucks, is a major issue. Where do those 'rules' come from?  And are they real imperatives, or fleeting social constructions by nutty people in the woods and fields? 

 

 

[gregtpal]

I'm atheist, thank God.....

[mazzgolf]

1 hour ago, JFC1 said:

the ethics of hunting, and thus whether we shoot turkeys in trees or fawns vs. bucks, is a major issue. Where do those 'rules' come from?  And are they real imperatives, or fleeting social constructions by nutty people in the woods and fields? 

When I first started hunting, I asked this very question. Where do these hunting ethics/rules come from? Because when I first started and heard about these rules, I was like, "Why can't I shoot a duck off the water? Why can't I shoot a turkey out of a roost?" People can (and do) disagree on these. I actually don't have a good answer for why you shouldn't shoot a turkey out of a roost (ignoring the law for a moment) other than "It's not sporting to do that." But I guarantee you, if I was a turn-of-the-century poor backwoods hunter who was hungry with an empty fridge, I'd shoot that turkey without a second thought.  Situational ethics!  But I'll always try to use my Christian worldview to help guide me in my hunting decisions.

 

[Bucndoe]

6 hours ago, mazzgolf said:

(I do appreciate this conversation, it is fun to engage on a topic like this... and congrats on the deer... even though it died in a muddy stream and it probably sucked dragging that out )

That's also a mistake, in my opinion  Ethics are simply how we apply moral values/duties to a specific situation. Ethics are even more difficult to discern because they are situation-relative (is it OK to kill a person because someone stole your pencil? What about if someone is about to steal your child?). We could have the same guiding principals (morals) but differ on how to apply them (ethics) [see my earlier point about Christians differing on the death penalty or engaging in war]. My argument about the objectivity of morality avoids the question of ethics - how we apply our morals doesn't answer the question "are more values and duties objective or are they subjective/person-relative?"

For example, is it objectively true that "it is wrong to murder"? How we apply that to different situations could be different (which is why I think you say you prefer to use the word "ethics"), but just concern yourself with that general guiding principal for a moment -- "In general, it is wrong to murder" - ask yourself, is that objective? Is it binding to all people, everywhere, at all times past, present, and future regardless of what any person or society thinks about it? Or is that principal person-relative? If I say, "In general, I should be able to murder whoever and whenever I want" - on naturalism, that is no more wrong than saying, "In general, I should be able to eat vanilla ice cream whenever I want." How can you condemn me for either of those general principals, on atheism/naturalism?

And I'm the opposite - when I first learned about the epistemology vs. ontology distinction, it opened my eyes and made things more clear to me on this subject. I don't see how someone can answer the question "Do objective moral values and duties exist?" by explaining how we come to learn what they are. As I say, it may be true that we come to learn what our morals are through evolution, parental conditioning, and societal pressure (which I do not grant, but for the sake of argument). That does nothing to explain if those morals are objective (it could be through blind evolutionary processes, or through a God-directed process - just knowing the HOW doesn't explain the WHAT).

Here, when you say "ethics" I think you really mean "morals" (the guiding principals that determine how you will act in certain situations). And I would disagree with the statement "we don't know where morals come from". If the Christian worldview is true (there's that "if" again), then we DO know where morals come from. They are grounded in God - moral values are grounded in his nature, and moral duties are grounded in his commands. Ethics are simply applying those morals to specific situations. We may differ on how to apply these objective morals, but that says nothing about the objectivity of those morals. So, where do we get our ethics from? Well, we apply them to the best of our ability so they follow those objective guiding principals (morals). Bring it back to hunting - why do I agree with wanton waste game laws? Because wasting an animal (or killing it for the sake of killing it) goes against the Christian moral principal that we are to be good stewards of the resources God has given to us.

But IF naturalism is true, then I do agree with you - in that case, we don't know where morals come from. Well, let me walk that back a little. We do know. Each person has their own moral standards - they are subjective and come from each person (but where each person gets them from, we do not know. It is person-relative and they can make it up as they go if they want). Everyone's morals are on the same level playing field. You say morals should promote group adhesion. I want chaos in society. Why am I wrong and you right? Who gets to decide? The majority?  The strong? Why is that the determining factor of who determines right from wrong? Maybe I think a small minority of intelligent people who are in the top-5 in IQ should decide right from wrong (that eliminates everyone on this forum, by the way ). And note, that group changes every generation, which means morals will change every generation (and that just is subjectivity almost by definition). In the end, it is just "I like vanilla, you like chocolate" - there is no right or wrong, good or evil. If we really, truly lived out an atheistic-naturalist worldview, it would be hell-on-earth. Nazism could no more be condemned than a utopian, democratic America.

Ethics are a choice as well