Ethics = completely pointless

Your thoughts and opinions are also subjective, so does that mean your words here are actually without 'real meaning' ? Hard to see the difference.

As for so called 'religious ethics' - they are fixed, or were fixed during past epochs when half the moral issues we now face didn't exist, and since any form of revision is generally frowned upon by the religious, it's hard to see how any ethical progress could ever be made under such a scheme.

To the islamic fundie, religious ethics would include indifference to things like punishment by mutilation etc, or even seeing them as desirable, and commanded by allah, which to the ethical sense of most people is utterly abhorent and un-acceptable.

 

For one thing if you were to take a logic or philosophy course, you would learn that name calling is a logical fallacy and wouldn't be doing it.

 

Such is the way with nihilism/existentialism. Whether or not what i say has meaning.. i am assumming communication through an external reality of which i CAN know exists. Using words implies meaning of some sort.. and that is because i have to use what you consider to have meaning to make "sense" in your eyes. But yes you are right to say that what i say is subjective... but so is everything. It is the problem with this kind of thought. But it does not automatically imply that there is objectivity.

My point is that under a God, all the objective ethics ever needed are given... hence they are objective.

Without God ethics are non-existent.

Well? If i actually believed in Allah and believed that he had given us all we need to know and do then i would see them as desirable to. They only do it because they believe it is commanded by God.

 

I have taken a philosophy course.

Philosophy is not one belief.

You seem to fail at thinking outside the box. Answer my questions or don't. I don't care for smartass replies.

Objectivity = universally applicable laws that are set in stone
Subjectivity = personal opinion

Right and wrong are concepts. As moral relativists claim, objective morality cannot exist because there is nothing for it to be obtained from.

You saying something about what is good for mankind being right does not mean anything without evidence.

Just because most people claim this is true does not mean that it is.

Do you see the conundrum now?

 

I suggested before that 'all the ethics ever needed are given' is not the case. There are new ethical issues which religions don't mention, because they didn't exist at the time they were formulated.
Take drugs and their recreational use, or their use for so called nimnd expansion and personal growth - nothing at all in koran, bible, diamond sutra etc about that.
Same with genetic engineering and many other ethical issues.

I really don't think ethics requires god to lay down fixed moral laws. In effect they are more like conventions or norms arrived at by human beings looking at things and seeing how beneficial improvements can be made.
Marxism might furnish an example of this type of approach.

Well maybe what god commanded back in medieval arabia isn't what god would command now.
You just might come to think that allah had morals remarkably similar to those of a medieval warlord, and even that perhaps this particular conception of god is a bit lacking.
What prevents this is usually fear, or lack of education, or blind conservatism.
People need to learn to see beyond the little bubble universe of their trad religions.

 

”I have taken a philosophy course.”?
Then why do you continue to use the logical fallacy of name calling?

And yes I do see the conundrum, that's why I said that you might benefit from logic and philosophy courses.

Let’s take a look at what you are hung up on.

At no time in this quote did I say that these statements were right, correct or true, I merely asked your opinion of whether you agreed with them or not? Since when do I need evidence or a reason to ask someone opinion?

At which point you said I was just pulling it out of thin air, to which I replied:

Which you still haven’t done as far as I know.

 

Firstly, taking a philosophy course does not imply that i am not a human and don't act on impulse. Neither am i perfect. Neither do i care whether or not insults are logical.

Secondly how exactly are they a logical fallacy? So critique of things is a fallacy?

Thirdly, stop detracting from the discussion.

This is because you think i am wrong. At least i have given an argument! My argument is taught in philosophy classes... doubt in what we can know is a basic principle of logic.

Why tell me that i need logic courses? How is this any help? I don't care how you think i reason, i want a debate. If you disagree then say why. Don't just give one line replies that offer nothing besides more questions.

Okay then well start explaining what your opinions are.

I have already answered that for me to disagree or agree with that i have to understand where the claims come from. It makes no sense otherwise.

That is my answer, it is an illogical claim.

Learn to think outside of the box. I can't say whether or not i agree because there is nothing to agree with.

If you don't understand that then you need to do some thinking. If youd do understand then tell me where you are taking this.

My definition: "right" = a human idea of what should be done.. what is the correct course of action.

"wrong" is the opposite.

However, it is impossible to know what should or shouldn't be done.

If you think my claims are a bit vague then read between the lines... it will take forever if you ask such basic questions at a slow rate.

 

See, while there might be many subtly different versions, I don't think it would be true to claim that one couldn't identify trends in them. One could observe that people tend to be more sympathetic towards murder based on their socio-economic background, or on their religious faith, for example.

Subjectivity isn't an excuse to wallow in ignorance; it's a challenge to us to make sense of information knowing that there are only degrees of relative truth and certainty rather than absolutes. You've already hinted that you understand this, that the absence of absolutes should not render us unable to function.

I know it's not wrong, but I think one would be crazy to dwell on it, knowing that it's logically irreconcilable with the process of living.

And many matters that have been long considered aren't worth knicker elastic.

So what if it's not all people? Does it actually matter? Do you think that, in the presence of some objective truth, the situation would be any different? There'd still be people denying it.

You've got it backwards: power decides what is objective and subjective. There's no objective measure of objectivity!

And we're back to this again: people who discuss ethics apparently think they're discussing "right" and "wrong". Maybe, but the "right" and "wrong" that they're discussing is the one that you have already professed to understand. So far, the only person I've seen asserting that those who consider ethics are convinced that they're discussing an objective morality is you. I've never known any ethicist do so.

When did you first discover post-modernism? Was it recent?

 

Then why are you in the Philosophy forum? Why not start this in the Random Thoughts forum

They are a fallacy in the fact that even if I’m the stupidest person who ever lived and you may even have proof of it, that fact does not prove or disprove what I’ve said. What has been said stands on its own regardless of who said it and needs to be proved or disproved on its own merits.

As for the statement itself the same is true, you can call it stupid, ridiculous, idiotic, boneheaded or smartass but alas, that does not in any way prove or disprove that statement.

Thus name calling is a logical fallacy and a waste of time.

Yes, in logic it is a fallacy. Unless in someway the critique has something to prove or disprove what has been said and in that case forget the critique and just say what proves or disproves.

Actually, you are the one distracting from the discussion, I merely was trying to get the discussion on track by trying to establish definitions and common ground for the discussion, Philosophy 101, and you’re the one who made a big deal of it

 

Its not logical to based one life, beliefs, ethics or morals on unproven fiction, ie religion.

 

What you've just said is unproven as well. Do you base your life on it?

 

Still we observe that the right judgments were examples of such ways for what we, each one of us should do instead. Not to say that this is not hypocritical, but so often such is the mystified state we walk around in. This is post-modernism which is not recent, but a style of architecture, environmental responses towards the certified fact of endorsing respectability for what it''s worth. Yes, it is materialism usually making ourselves with the knowledge we think should be understood.

So religion is the alternative of ethics of standards for behaviour. Standards , or moral standards, are for the philosophy of justificationalism. We must also prove ourselves trustworthy to show our own standards to the community.

Such is how the anti-wicked community works. But morality again and again is requested for how we react inidivdually to the Law.

That's a book: just like the Bible.:cheers2:

 

It may not be proven because it isn't written as a proof. Reasoning is the foundation of logic. There is no sound proof for the religious arguement so how could it be reasonable for it to be logical?

 

God or no God has been argued for thousands of years and by some of the best minds in history and it hasn't been proved one way or the other.

Now unless you've have come up with a proof since yesterday that means that; There is no sound proof for the anti-religious argument so how could it be reasonable for it to be logical?

So my question still stands; What you've just said is unproven as well, do you base your life on it?

 

A lack of ethics only works with a hermit.

Ethics are a basic code that allows people to exist in groups with as little friction as possible. Those that belong to that particular group do so because it reflects their own desire to live in peace. They're willing to put aside certain personal freedoms in exchange for this harmony.

Ethics have to be flexible. It's a low mark on civilization when they're not.



x

 

Ethics (and morality) are an illusion of the separative identity. They are a vain and contrived attempt to emulate the behavior of an individual who has realized their true and infinite nature, which is always intrinsically pure and harmonious.

Ethics only exist in proportion to the degree to which one has repressed the desires and motivations of the separative identity. When the illusion of separation has been dispelled, ethics become entirely irrelevent.

So yes, ultimately, ethics are completely pointless -- albeit not for the reasons stated in this thread's initial post.

Travis

 

Ethics is also part of religion. I'm not sure why the OP describes it as separate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_in_religion

If someone has a bike, they have 1 bike. A person with no bikes, has 0 bikes. A person with an anti-bike has -1 bike. The lack of something is not the opposite of it. It is the neutral position between positive and negative. Which equates 0 numerically. Its takes nothing to prove nothing. 0=0 That is logical. Since religion is an positive assertion, for it to be logical, it would require a series of logical steps that would add up to it, like A+B+C+D=religion. A,B,C,D don't exist. Therefore religion is not logical.

 

Nice try.

 

Nothing is true everything is permitted

 

the survival of the human species.

A lot of it is grey, but there are general principles that guide us, like the golden rule.

So Dawkins,Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens are wrong or pulling our legs when they argue that atheists can be as moral and ethical as religious people? Actually, I think Dawkins makes a good case that altruism has survival value for the species, and is deeply rooted in human evolution.

I hope you're views aren't typical for atheists.You sound like a budding Ted Bundy.

There seem to be four basic kinds of people in the world, classified according to their reactions when spotting a turtle crossing the highway of life: (1) the nasties, who aim for the turtle; (2) the scrooges, who continue along indifferent as to whether or not they hit the turtle; (3) the concerned, who swerve to avoid the turtle; and (4) the rescuers, who park their cars, get out, and take the turtle to safety. Which you are is ultimately a matter of choice, largely influenced by personality and conditioning. A society is healthy if it condemns 1 & 2, and encourages 3 & 4. A society is sick if it does the opposite. A sick socity will eventually collapse after its members suffer the misery of Hobbes' proverbial "War of all against all." So it is in the self interest of society to encourage 1 & 2, and discourage 3 & 4. Hence the public lip service paid to religion, and the difficulty nihilism has in getting a following. Sometimes, society's other agendas upset this balance. e.g., Capitalism's pursuit of economic efficiency and commercialism can encourage #2 and even #1. Concern about this development has fueled a religious revival in the United States, but the struggle is touch and go. In evolutionary terms, what we're talking about is Dawkins' memes, and the struggle among them for survival. May the turtle lover meme prevail!