Fallaneze

But why is it more rational to believe that our moral perceptions are purporting something illusory rather than something true? We have basic moral intuitions that nearly everyone share. 

In short, our internal organs have no aims or goals associated with them unless God exists. There is no such thing as having a better brain, better heart, etc. 

The results so far, whether human beings, dogs, monkeys, etc. isn't of interest. What I want to point out is that internal organs, the results of a mindless process, cannot have any aims or goals. They are not something that achieves anything, other than in the mind of human imagination. 

Yes my reply was in response to your post # 128. If the child is too young to remember or isn't physically harmed, then the implication is that in these instances sexually abusing young children wouldn't be immoral and could actually be considered morally good if the abuser's brain had a positive response to it and the baby or young child had no negative brain response. It is irrational.

Before you were saying that "excessive dopamine" was evil but now saying that "dopamine addiction" is evil. I would consider our brains to have "excessive dopamine" levels during sex, especially during the grand finale. Nothing evil about it and no permanent brain damage.

So if the child is too young to remember the sexual abuse, or wasn't physically harmed by it, and as long as neither of their brains secreted chemicals that would make them feel bad about it, there's nothing to consider immoral about sexually abusing young children? 

So if a pedophile's mental response reacts positively to raping children, but your mental response is negative, neither of you are more right than the other in determining whether raping children is morally good or morally wrong? 

So medical science is based on our imagination though?

Right, so our organs can't be doing something in order to achieve something. That would just be us imagining it.

Because by achieving something you're goal-setting. What is being achieved if there's no goal? 

If there's no God, then human beings are just the byproduct of a mindless process and have no inherent aims or goals. This would mean that what we should or shouldn't do is completely undefined. That means that what's morally right or wrong would wholly depend on human opinions 

For the same reason physics can't. They're both mindless processes.

We live in a world that's so full of information. Think of it like graphics in a game. If the world we see really arose from mindlessness, why is it so intelligible, beautiful, creative, rationally structured, purpose-driven, and complexly ordered? If there's zero intellect behind the world we see I'd expect it to be blank, unimaginitive, dull, distorted, obscure and unintelligible, aimless, absurd, haphazard, unprincipled, plain, and disjointed. 

Ok cool, so internal organs can't be doing something in order to achieve something.

Apply the same principle to evolution. They're both mindless processes.

So would you have no problem with "physics" rolling a boulder down a hill in order to achieve something?

It's a matter of whether a mindless process can account for it

A function is either just a description of activity (like describing water soaking into the soil as a 'function') or it's described in terms of something done in order to achieve something. You can say that our organs have a function in the first sense but not the second.

Medical science describes our internal organs as if they do. 

How could evolution have goals? Evolution is a mindless process, like physics. In order to have goals you must possess intent (to reach the goal) and knowledge (of the goal itself). It's pretty obvious that mindless processes are incapable of both

Are internal organs the result of evolution?

So sex is evil? Loading up on antidepressants is morally good?

Seems outrageous but it's perfectly logical.

Without God, evolution is just a mindless process that has no aims or goals. This means that everything that results from evolution is purposeless, including internal organs. If our organs fo have a purpose, and not one that we're merely imagining, an external intelligence is required for such a purpose.

Lowering your dopamine levels would make you chronically depressed. Would we be acting morally for stopping our body's natural production of this evil chemical?

Would we be acting morally for taking medication that increases our levels of serotonin (common in antidepressants)?

And in other news, I guess sex is evil. 

That goes against most people's prevailing views on this. What makes you say that?

That doesn't seem practical. If someone were cheating on their spouse, during sex while they felt pleasurable, it follows that they would believe that they're doing something morally good. In the guilt that follows, let's say the day after, they would believe that what they did was morally wrong. What makes more sense is acknowledging that what they were doing was wrong all along but also acknowledging feeling pleasure and guilt.

Yes, unless evolution is just a means towards an end by some higher intelligence, like God. How hard is it to believe that our eyes have no aims or goals? "To see" seems so much more intuitive.

But the key problem here is that if evolution has no aims or goals, you can't tie in morality with some overarching neo-darwinian aim or goal. If morality has some sort of purpose it must either come from a moral authority or from ourselves.

Under this framework, would it still be morally wrong to cheat on your significant other if you could get away with it and weren't bothered by your conscience?

I agree. But that doesn't determine which one explains morality better. The problem with "well being" is that people committing acts of evil can gain wellbeing and people committing acts of good can lose wellbeing. 

Consider a scenario where two people privately mock someone for being disabled. They both feel pretty good about themselves afterward, feeling a sense of superiority. They both gained wellbeing and the victim lost none. What they did should be good using a standard of wellbeing. But is what they did something that added or subtracted from pure love?

I still don't see how evolution, or any other mindless process, can have aims or goals. When we discuss things that are the result of evolution we can't say that those things have certain aims or goals.

Well we can draw the conclusion that people perceive themselves as having well-being and having more or less of it. If this isn't a problem, same thing goes for love. 

Well surely you would admit that people can have more or less wellbeing?

Am I correct in my assessment that 3RU7AL would have stronger moral character if he cared about people having their pencils stolen and being lied to about it?

Can you quantify how much well-being you have? That hasn't stopped moral philosophers from corralling around the idea.

Consider a variety of situations where people act immorally. Can you think of any exceptions to the theory that morality is based on harm/benefit to Darwinian fitness? Can you think of any exceptions the theory that morality is based on the amount of pure love gained or lost relative to our awareness of how our thoughts and actions are affecting other living things?

To put it simply, because there are differences in the amount of harm that is caused. Rape causes more harm than lying about stealing a pencil does. "Harm" is a hugely ambiguous word. It could include physical and mental suffering, financial damages, etc. Theoretically, someone who is seriously mentally ill may even be more psychologically damaged by having their favorite pencil stolen and lied to about it than if they were raped. Would this  overreaction suddenly make it more immoral for someone to have stolen their pencil and lie about it? No, unless they were aware this particular individual's excessive psychological reaction would occur. If they were aware, their action was indeed more immoral than if they weren't aware. This is why not only "harm" (I prefer referring to it as pure love gained or lost) but our level of awareness of how the act would affect others factors into how immoral it was.

If you could quantify that amount of pure love that is gained or lost, relative to our level our awareness of how our thoughts and actions affect other living things, I think this is the hidden measure for determining whether someone acted morally or immorally and to what extent.

Well we clearly recognize that some actions are more immoral than others. Raping someone is more immoral than lying about stealing a pencil. So when you consider that there are "shades" of immorality, it's just a matter of having a ranked difference versus a number difference with wavelengths of light. 

A) you said that you weren't discounting my definition of God based on the various other gods that have been proposed and debunked, but then go on to discount my definition of God doing exactly that. That's a genetic fallacy. The evidence needs to be weighed on it's own merits.

B) what evidence has been found that turned out not to be evidence? I'm only interested in discussing evidence that relates to God as defined.

C) yes, you can prove a negative, and I've given two examples. A negative claim that contains a logical contradiction cannot exist. A skyscraper in my pocket 1 mile tall does not exist. Sagan's dragon is a violation of the law of identity and therefore doesnt exist.

"Notice, for a start, that "You cannot prove a negative" is itself a negative. So, if it were true, it would itself be unprovable."

"Saying "You cannot prove a negative" has been called pseudologic because there are many proofs that substantiate negative claims in mathematics, science, and economics including Arrow's impossibility theorem."

D) while we cannot definitively prove God does or doesn't exist, we can determine which belief is more rational given the weight of the evidence.

E) Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Evidence that something is true can be obtained rationally as well as empirically.

F) I put the fine-tuned argument in sylllogistic form. Which premise do you dispute?

G) It depends on how you define the term "measurable." Evidence of God is obtainable - rationally. 

H) We only need to determine what the most rational explanation is given the weight of the evidence. 

A) "The genetic fallacy (also known as the fallacy of origins or fallacy of virtue[1]) is a fallacy of irrelevance that is based solely on someone's or something's history, origin, or source rather than its current meaning or context. This overlooks any difference to be found in the present situation, typically transferring the positive or negative esteem from the earlier context. In other words, a fact is ignored in favor of attacking its source.

Your central contentions seem to be the following:

1) We can't accept that a claim is true until we have corroborating empirical evidence.

2) the fine-tuned constants might not be able to hold any other values, and even if they could, there might only be a small allowance within the overall range.

3) in order for a claim to be accepted as true or rejected as untrue, it must have a way of being proven or disproven.

Let me know if I missed any or if you want it worded differently. 

How is that a problem for the definition? Do you think that means that they believe that acting unlovingly is morally good? Or that acting unlovingly is morally preferable to acting lovingly?

Subjective means based on opinion. Objective means based on fact. If the standard is immutable, it's based on fact. 

I didn't say it was always moral to tell the truth.

I'd say it is the lesser of the two evils. I would consider it the more moral choice but neither choice is "moral."

Not if the will or dipsosition is immutable. 

No, it is not moral to tell the truth if it gets an innocent person killed. You can remain honest without answering their demands.

Morality is an awareness of whether our thoughts and actions are affecting other living things in a loving or unloving way. 

That definition is pretty close I think. There's a backdrop against that though because we generally find killing animals for food or cutting down trees for firewood to be morally permissible. We still have a sense of accountability though for let's say aimlessly destroying the beauty of a natural landscape or needlessly torturing an animal before eating it.

Except the source of objective moral imperatives must possess intentionality. Moral wrongs are always a disconformity to a certain will or disposition 

My point is that if logic alone is not enough to demonstrate the truth of something, if there must also be corroborating empirical evidence to demonstrate that something is true, then each and every statement you make to purport the truth of something, which is based on logic alone at this point, is pending corroborating empirical evidence.

Yes, no doubt children act out and have a diminished sense of empathy. Accurately sharing how much we know is desirable because we can fill in gaps in our knowledge. Filling in gaps in knowledge is desirable because it makes you smarter. People have different motives for being honest. Being honest is a good trait but motive also factors into it.

I'd tell the guy ar the door to wait right there then bring out a shotgun and blast his stomach in. Or lock the door and call the police. Or tell him to f-off. I would never give info on someone who wanted to kill an innocent person in my house. This doesn't mean I would be dishonest or lying. I'd simply withhold it.