In 2009 Mary said to appear in Warrak poor district , the same happens with me ..It was outside the church when the crowed IN the church shout that they saw the Virgin …Many people was out there did not succeed in going in to see what happened because it was so crowded then suddenly a woman beside me shouted in joy and so nervousness and said “Here she is ” nobody saw Mary but her.

So how could it be happened that some people see some not if it was a Camera or Laser or whatever ??

Lewis would say that it is the Natural Law operating on your consciousness. I would say it is years of evolution which have created in us a desire to help our fellow creatures. We are not just conscious, but self-conscious creatures and so we not only make choices, but are very often aware of the mental processes which lead to those choices being made.

If evolution had not created in us the desire to help others, so that when we can see rationally that it is not in our personal best interests to do so, we would not have survived as a species.

Incidentally, I think you are wrong about Lewis having no personal experience of these situations. I’m sure he fought in the First World War in the trenches.

“Geisler and Turek have made their point: evidence has no power to compel you to believe the Gospel against your will. Everybody got that? Is that point perfectly clear? Good, because they’re just about to contradict it.”

Thanks for continuing your excellent blog, Deacon!

~David D.G.

Speaking of Vox, I recently finished (well, close enough) my chapter by chapter rebuttal of the book and I found some of the same flaws as you, though I found some you didn’t seem to catch. Two examples, if memory serves, are Vox’s claim that Harris’ examples of religious wars are actually not religious in nature are false. The fact is if you research those conflicts, they are religious, at least in part.

Vox’s FBI statistics proving that religious doesn’t cause much conflict is also false. In fact, Vox distorted what the New Atheists were arguing and fudged the stats. The fact is religion in the second leading cause of hate crime, and not just in 2005, the date of the stats he cited.

If you’d like to take a look at my contribution and give your opinion I’d really appreciate it.

http://arizonaatheist.blogspot.com/2011/02/irrational-atheist-refutation.html

Thanks!

“What about unreciprocated altruism?”

The altruist was still acting on an outcome considered desirable.

“And a study has recently concluded that subjects will act spitefully towards others for no reason and with no possible reward.”

What sort of reward? One could argue that being a dick to someone for the gratification of being a dick is a reward.

“Atheists are moral parasites because they suck the morality from Christianity whilst trying to destroy it.”

Beale’s claim that atheists are “moral parasites” is complete nonsense. The big three (assault, theft, fraud) were opposed on moral and legal grounds long before Christianity and in lands which never heard of Judaism. In fact, they’re very easy to reason out as requirements for a functional society. In this regard, it’s very easy to reason out that a person oughtn’t commit assault, theft, and fraud because it’s a requirement for the polite society that they enjoy. Or you could start with a position of self-preservation. These crimes are shunned by the majority and committing them increases the chance of that person or society at large extracting retribution for this breech. Of course, you could also argue that natural selection is responsible for selecting traits which enforce a sense of guilt and shame at committing them. Or even that this guilt and shame is the result of many millenniums of tradition proscribing these actions.

But to claim parasitism on the part of atheists to Christian morality is to stake a claim in these morals. And, as the author of this article put it, Christianity did not invent these morals. Rather this seems to me another incident of Beale covertly nodding an argument for the existence of their god to the faithful. If Christianity did not always exist, but these morals existed before Christianity, then the only conclusion left is some inane explanation that “goddidit” and stake a sneaky claim to Christian moral victory and the existence of their god.

Anywho, back on topic. One has to wonder at the logic of claiming moral parasitism on the part of atheism to begin with. I’ll agree with Beale that we overwhelmingly are opposed to traditional Christian morality proscribing homosexuality, sex before marriage, etc. That should be enough to make it very clear that we aren’t ripping off Christian morality. Even Beale’s own argument can be summed up as “atheists are leeching off of Christian morality, except for the stuff they aren’t.”

There is, of course, a very simple alternative to sucking at the teet of the divine command theory of morality for atheists, namely moral realism. Which, to make it simple, is the position that moral sentences express propositions. Simple, effective, and avoids that nasty tendency of apologists to lump all atheists in as moral relativists.

The apex of this process (so far) is the evolution of intelligent, self-aware consciousness.

That should be (so far as we know).

–

Me too. Gap in posting is worrisome, Deacon!

I must disagree with your assessment that Zeitoun “was not found wanting” when examined by the best means possible at the time, considering that we still have access to those means (including some of the photographs displayed above), and they include a number of very clear evidences of a clumsy fraud. To say that the Church is satisfied with the “proof” provided is to accuse the Church of being a very poor judge of the evidence, and to suggest at least the possibility that similar “manifestations,” all the way back to the Resurrection itself, may owe more to gullibility than to divinity.

The infused virtue of Hope is a free gift from God. Scripture is full of examples of Our Lord intervening with signs and wonders to strengthen the faith and hope of the disciples. Thomas and peter are prime examples. Some of the occasional Marian events appear to be along these lings tho certainly not of the same level as Our Lord’s.

A consolation thus may strengthen Faith and Hope, though not to replace the fundaments of the Holy Scriptures and the life of Christ in the Church. Thus they are not meant as focal points for salvific grace, but as simple emblems of God’s wonders; not easily explained and there simply as free gifts to strengthen our paths towards sanctification. No dout some of them are the products of falsehood and deranged minds; but they are easily debunked, for their messages conflict with either the spirit or the literal meaning of the Holy Scriptures and the Church Fathers.

Just some thoughts…blessings!

instead of
“I am not well read on it – and the wording is different – but it seems similar to me.”

Are you familiar w/ Alonzo Fyfe’s desire utilitarianism? If so, do you think what you’ve outlined here congruent with DU. I am not well read on it – and the wording is different – but it seems similar to me.

Thanks -

Paul

What do fanatical utilitarians say? Is Peter Singer one of them?

This “slope” is not uniform, however. For example, there’s a subjective dimension to the definition of which types of killings constitute “murder.” Most people agree that killing in self-defense is not murder, some people think capital punishment is murder, and a lot of people think abortion is murder. The case of abortion is even more complex because there’s an opposing slope away from violating a woman’s right to decide what does and does not happen to her own body, not to mention the issue of deciding at what point the developing embryo crosses the threshold between prehuman and human. (As I’ve mentioned before, I may be a materialist, but I don’t go so far as reducing humanity to a single DNA molecule, so I don’t buy the “life begins at conception” argument.)

So yeah, I think “landscape” works well as a metaphor for the interplay of the objective, subjective, and materialistic components of morality. It’s practical and reality-based, without being the fanatical utilitarianism you allude to.

Nick: (Later): “My only claim at this point is about God and not about angels. Angels are secondary.”

Nick: “Yes. You only were making an analogy. The analogy was surely in no way to refer to God. Wow. Talk about back-pedaling.”

Yes. Talk about back-pedaling, indeed.

I do not use emotional arguments. I have issued you a challenge. If you think that goodness can be explained apart from God, then by all means come and challenge.

Splendid. So the actual substance of the challenge is to address the specific issue. The matter of where I happen to post my response is an irrelevant triviality of circumstance that has no bearing on whether or not I have responded to your challenge. Agreed?

If all you’re saying is that everyone does what they choose to do, and that you choose to call that “self-interest”: why, then, you’ve just declared that the only option is self-interest, full stop. Which is doubtless true, if you adopt that particular definition, but only because it’s tautological. Personally, I think it better to give “self-interest” a less broad meaning, not least because using it so broadly pretty much guarantees being misunderstood.

(Inflammatory rhetoric about the irrelevant topic of abortion: ignored.)

Yes, as I already agreed, doing (some kinds of) evil things contravenes principles of Christianity but not of atheism; for the same reasons, it contradicts principles of humanism, and none of theism. What bearing does that have on whether Christianity is preferable to secular humanism, or theism to atheism? (Of course humanism in this sense is not the only alternative to Christianity, any more than Christianity is the only alternative to humanism. It’s just an example.)

I deny, or at least decline to accept without actual evidence, your claim about what “atheistic societies” have wanted to do. Not least because “atheistic societies” could mean all kinds of things, some of them entirely irrelevant (in case you hadn’t noticed, no one here is advocating Soviet communism) and different sorts of “atheistic society” presumably have different aims. Also, it looks like you’re equivocating on “man”.

I don’t see what Lenin’s or Stalin’s attitude to religion has to do with what the “Communist Manifesto” says; I repeat that it simply does not present religion as the enemy. (I would, just out of curiosity, be interested to know your source(s) for the assertion about why Lenin picked Stalin; also, picked him for what? Lenin didn’t pick Stalin as his successor; he didn’t pick anyone as his successor.)

Yes, obviously any position that values and disvalues things other than pleasure and pain has to make reference to things other than pleasure or pain. It sounds as if you think there’s some problem with that, but it’s not clear why. And I’m not sure why you’re asking about *my* views on morality; we were talking about EdW’s.

It is not true that all societies condemn the killing of innocent humans; some societies have practiced infant sacrifice. I’m sure, though, that there are things that just about every society approves of, and things that just about every society disapproves of; but of course that isn’t at all the same thing as saying that everyone deep down acknowledges the Natural Law.

Which objections in the Summa? Huge numbers of them. Picking at random (really truly at random) I find the question: Whether an effect of law is to make men good? and the first objection runs as follows: “It seems that it is not an effect of law to make men good. For men are good through virtue, since virtue, as stated in Ethic. ii, 6 is “that which makes its subject good.” But virtue is in man from God alone, because He it is Who “works it in us without us,” as we stated above (Question 55, Article 4) in giving the definition of virtue. Therefore the law does not make men good.” Well, (1) I am not an Aristotelian and see no reason why I should accept Aristotle’s definition of “virtue”, especially if it’s interpreted as Aquinas’s hypothetical opponent seems to be doing as saying that *nothing other than virtue* can make anyone good by definition; and (2) I do not believe that “virtue is in man from God alone” (nor even that Christians ought to believe that). So the first objection Aquinas considers to this proposition is founded on philosophical and religious assumptions that I don’t share.

I repeat that this example was chosen at random; if I picked another proposition at random from the Summa I think there’s at least a 25% chance that at least one of Aquinas’s objections would be based on entirely different presumptions I don’t share.

I think this “three parts of an action” thing is extremely silly. Here’s one reason. DD has offered one answer: “object, intention and circumstance”. One can support this by quoting, say, IIa.18.2-4 (note: I don’t guarantee that this is the standard notation for Summa references) where Aquinas argues that the goodness or badness of an action is derived from each of these things. Or one could say that what matters is whether a thing is virtuous, useful and pleasant, and support this on the basis of I.5.6. Or one could say that goodness is to be analysed into mode, species and order, on the basis of I.5.5. (I’m not sure whether one could plausibly make these out to be *the three parts of an action that constitute its morality*, I suppose. But, if it comes to that, I’m not sure one could with the other proposals I’ve mentioned either: e.g., the circumstances or the virtuousness of an action are not *parts* of it.) And we haven’t even got into answers that (in line with your expressed preferences) make “being” or “actuality” central to goodness. In other words: Aquinas says lots and lots of things about goodness, including *multiple* triplets into which the goodness of an action could perhaps be analysed; demanding that others here come up with whatever particular triplet you happen to have in mind amounts to demanding that they play some silly guessing game with you. Which they have, so far as I can see, no particular reason to do. You might as well ask them to pronounce “Shibboleth” and see if they do it the way you prefer.

(Note: As I’ve already said, I am not an Aquinas expert. It would not astonish me if some details of the previous paragraph were wrong. If you’re inclined to say that this invalidates my point, consider: Do you really want to say that only Aquinas experts are worth talking to? And, if so, what on earth are you doing here?)

Reply: Nor have I said such. I say we only do things because we perceive that there is some good that will come of it.

G:(A caveat: One can argue that *everyone*, *always*, does what they want to do — by definition: if they do it, that shows that they want it — and thereby claim that what they may prefer to describe as altruism, concern for truth, commitment to their religious obligations, etc., is all really a matter of “self-interest” in the sense that they are doing what, all things considered, *they* choose to do. But that applies equally to everyone, moral realist or not.)

Reply: Correct. That’s my stance. Everyone does something because they perceive some good will come of it.

G: Sure, our society has been Christianized. And Romanized. And Utilitarianized. And all-sorts-of-other-things-ized. For that matter, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany had also been Christianized. How’s that relevant?

Reply: Actually, Russia and Germany were being moved away from that Christianization and the further one moves away from it, the worse the society will become. Today, you can rip apart a live baby in the womb of a mother and society calls that a moral right.

G: It is entirely reasonable to say “yes, they did bad things, but so did some Christians” in response to an argument of the form “see how bad atheists are: these atheists did bad things”. Yes, you are quite correct that doing awful things doesn’t violate any “tenet of atheism” because atheism has scarcely any tenets. Likewise, doing awful things doesn’t violate any tenet of theism. It does, however, violate tenets of (for instance) Christianity, or of any number of non-religious ethical systems. What’s your point here? That atheism doesn’t do all the things Christianity does? No one ever claimed it does: atheism (like theism) is only only one part of anyone’s worldview. So what? Nothing about atheism (any more than about theism) requires you to have no other beliers or values.

Reply: The point is that when Christians do evil, they are acting in direct contradiction to Christianity. When the atheist societies did evil, they were not violating atheism. In fact, granting what Nietzsche said, it’s the logical outworking of the Uberman. Atheistic societies have wanted to eliminate God and put man in his place. Which man will it be?

G: It is beyond me how anyone can say with a straight face “The Communist Manifesto is quite clear. Religion is the enemy”. The *ruling classes* are the enemy; the CM portrays religion as an irrelevant distraction, not as The Enemy.

Reply: It also sees it as part of the style used to dominate over people by holding them under power. Karl Marx hated it for a religion and Lenin hand-picked Stalin for his hatred of the religious.

g:Yes, of course there are other things that matter besides pleasure and pain. I never said or suggested otherwise. If you wish to argue instead with Jeremy Bentham, I believe there’s a waxwork of him in one of London’s universities. (Personally, I wouldn’t want to be without poetry *or* sex.)

Reply: Then the question comes by what standard do you determine what pleasures are good or evil and what pains are good or evil and for that, you need to look outside of pleasure and pain to something beyond them by which you judge them.

g:It’s very mystifying that I remark about EdW’s position (which is not mine; I’ve said nothing about mine) that it doesn’t (as you claimed it does) involve an appeal to a fixed human nature — and then you respond by saying “You base morality on human nature”. First, I haven’t been talking about what, if anything, *I* base morality on. Secondly, I’d just attempted to explain how EdW’s position, as I understand it, is *not* based “on human nature”. (And then you segue into some irrelevant stuff about declaring some groups non-human. Bah.)

Reply: If that’s not your view, feel free to give your view. What are you going to base morality on?

g: Your comments about everyone knowing that natural law, etc., amount to this: “Deep down, everyone thinks the same as I do, but the Other Guys are insincere and dishonest, unlike me”. I don’t think there’s anything useful to be said in response to that, especially as you’ve offered no sort of evidence or argument to justify your claims about what everyone allegedly knows and how moral nonrealists (I wish you wouldn’t keep saying “relativists”; that means something different) allegedly behave.

Reply: Feel free then to explain what you think the difference is and how you justify morality. Again, I state what I say because that is what the evidence says. All societies condemn the murder of innocent human beings, cowardice in war, and approve of such practices as honoring parents.

G: It is not merely a matter of not wishing to do your opponents’ thinking for them. You apparently wish them to do your thinking for you. You are of course entitled to want that, and not to deign to engage with anyone unless they first prove their worthiness by stating your position for you; but if you don’t get a lot of takers, you should be aware that there are plenty of possible reasons other than that your “opponents” are stupid and ignorant and lazy.

Reply: Nope. I go by what my opponents show me. I’ve stated before that I think you’re above a lot of the others here. However, most that I see really have not studied the other side.

G: I do not find that the objections considered and rebutted by the great philosophers are always the same as mine. Sometimes they appear to be straw men (though of course it’s possible that those really were the best objections at the time). Sometimes they’re just coming at things from a direction quite different from mine (e.g., the objections considered by Aquinas in the Summa theologiae often presuppose a particular sort of religious or philosophical position that I don’t share). Sometimes it just happens that my notion of what arguments are strongest differs from theirs.

Reply: Which objections of Aquinas do you have in mind?

G: And if *they* don’t always anticipate their readers’ objections correctly, why on earth should you expect anyone here to anticipate your position correctly? — And if, as seems obvious to me, it’s likely that even a very intelligent and well-read person making a serious attempt to guess what you might say will guess wrongly a lot of the time, why on earth should you expect anyone to do so when instead you could simply say what your position actually *is*?

Reply: Because the position I’m given can be found by doing some basic reading, that is, if you refer to the three parts of an action that constitute its morality. Unfortunately, the generation I speak of relies on the computer to do all their thinking for them.

However, if DD doesn’t want to accept my challenge to come to TheologyWeb, I could just move on. I haven’t come by due to lack of time and if he doesn’t want to back his position against me on TWeb, I shall just move on.

(I can think of some answers, but they’re all rather unflattering.)

Reply: To begin with, everything is based on ontological goodness whether we know it or not. Some practices are instrumental but they are instrumental for a good end and unless there is a good end, it makes no sense.

Would the world be different if everything was instrumental? Yes. We would treat everything not based on what it is, but based on what ends it serves. The end something serves is important, but only one part of the question.

DD:As for challenges, I’m not really interested in appeals to emotional arguments. I believe you yourself have expressed similar convictions, have you not?

Reply: I have, and I do not use emotional arguments. I have issued you a challenge. If you think that goodness can be explained apart from God, then by all means come and challenge.

Reply: No. It’s not a faulty epistemology. My epistemology begins with finding something I know to be true and then asking how I know it to be true. As for the question being meaningful, I want to ask if the claim is true first before asking if it’s meaningful.

Tony: And still worse, you have avoided, for the umpteenth time, the question I have been asking for two threads now. At this point I think that dodging is not too strong a term.

Reply: No. I just prefer answering the question of truth before that of application.

Tony: So, a scientific mindset doesn’t include the pursuit of meaningful explanations? That assertion needs some kind of demonstration, I think.

Reply: Do an experiment to determine if water freezes at 32 F. Then say “Well is it meaningful?” The matter doesn’t care if it’s meaningful. It just is. Science tells you the truth of whether matter performs in this way. Philosophy tells you the final cause of why it does.

Tony: Yup. That’s really not correcting what I said prior, though, is it?

Reply: I’m still wondering what you’re even thinking. To me, the claim of asking that science be meaningful is nonsensical.

Tony: And this is another way of repeating yourself while avoiding my central question.

Reply: See above. Truth first. Application second. I see the question of meaning as a way of avoiding the question of truth.

Tony: How have I changed what you say when I am speaking on my behalf?

Reply: Because you attributed it to me.

Tony: Ironically, you then go on to straw man my position immediately after accusing me of changing what you say. Have you heard of psychological projection?

Reply: No. You made a straw man comparing God to an invisible unicorn. I pointed out that this is fallacious in a Thomistic understanding.

Tony: Among other things, I didn’t say that invisible unicorns are the supreme being. Show me where I did.

Reply: Yes. You only were making an analogy. The analogy was surely in no way to refer to God. Wow. Talk about back-pedaling.

Tony: But please don’t use a supreme being as an excuse. You also assert that angels exist, and they are not the supreme being either. I don’t think my analogy, and its relation to my central question, should be this hard for you to follow.

Reply: Not at all hard to follow. My only claim at this point is about God and not about angels. Angels are secondary. I don’t base my worldview on angels.

Tony: You seem to be making excuses (and transplanting blame) for your inability to answer my central question.

Nick: Nope. You give a challenge. I answer that challenge in order of priorities. Right now, I don’t give a darn about what difference God’s existence makes to you. I care about if it’s true.

Tony: I must now construe your inability to answer my central question to mean that you have no answer to it. I truly wish you could demonstrate to me otherwise, as then I might actually learn something I don’t already know. As it stands now, though, you are one more brick in the wall for my prediction that I will be in for a long, dull, and fruitless discourse with someone when they proudly assert that my beliefs are wrong because they are Thomists.

Reply: I say your position on God’s existence is the problem and again, I settle that first.

The mathematical models we construct are like that. We are the ones that wear out the paths, but the paths work for us because they follow the lay of the land. If we keep refining the paths, and paving them, and interconnecting them, then we’ll end up with a sophisticated network of roads, and synergy between our own efforts and their underlying foundation in the solid earth.

Does the triangle Ideal, or the Fourier Transform Ideal, exist in a real sense, independent of reality? I think there’s a trend in mathematics to think not. At least I’ve heard of some mathematicians who have changed their minds and switched from the “discovered” came to the “created” camp.

There’s still the problem of how you can build complicated analytical systems using these Ideals, like Fourier Transforms, and still have them correspond to things we observe in reality. However, the explanation for that may be that space between their grounding in real truth and their application is short enough so that not enough error can accumulate to be noticed. In other words, the fact that these things “fit” reality exactly is an illusion that would dissolve the further away from base reality you got. There are certainly real phenomena that are only inexactly modeled by mathematical idealizations, and these are more the norm than the exception. Noise may actually be the best telltale that there is less to ontology than philosophers think.

Wow, that seems like an incredibly faulty epistemology you are asserting, and one that you could not possibly practice. There are an infinite number of questions that could be true. We pursue not every possible question that could be true, but ones that could also be meaningful.

And still worse, you have avoided, for the umpteenth time, the question I have been asking for two threads now. At this point I think that dodging is not too strong a term.

Me: “I believe a scientific mindset includes the pursuit of explanations.?A scientific mindset asks that explanations be meaningful.”
Nick: “No.”

So, a scientific mindset doesn’t include the pursuit of meaningful explanations? That assertion needs some kind of demonstration, I think.

Nick: “[A scientific mindset] asks that [explanations] be true. Also, science pursues explanations in relation to its own body of knowledge. Physics seeks explanations for matter in motion and how it interacts.”

Yup. That’s really not correcting what I said prior, though, is it?

Nick: “For final causality questions, you need philosophy.”

And this is another way of repeating yourself while avoiding my central question.

Me: “Because as I define the theory of invisible unicorns that control all human events so as to disguise their existence the theory is ad hoc and meaningless.”
Nick: “I see you like to change what I say.”

How have I changed what you say when I am speaking on my behalf?

Nick: “You should surely know an invisible unicorn makes no sense in a Thomistic understanding as being the supreme being.”

Ironically, you then go on to straw man my position immediately after accusing me of changing what you say. Have you heard of psychological projection?

Among other things, I didn’t say that invisible unicorns are the supreme being. Show me where I did.

But please don’t use a supreme being as an excuse. You also assert that angels exist, and they are not the supreme being either. I don’t think my analogy, and its relation to my central question, should be this hard for you to follow.

Nick: “I agree [that this conversation is uninteresting]. It is uninteresting when one person is interested in truth and one person doesn’t care about truth.”

You seem to be making excuses (and transplanting blame) for your inability to answer my central question.

I must now construe your inability to answer my central question to mean that you have no answer to it. I truly wish you could demonstrate to me otherwise, as then I might actually learn something I don’t already know. As it stands now, though, you are one more brick in the wall for my prediction that I will be in for a long, dull, and fruitless discourse with someone when they proudly assert that my beliefs are wrong because they are Thomists.

(A caveat: One can argue that *everyone*, *always*, does what they want to do — by definition: if they do it, that shows that they want it — and thereby claim that what they may prefer to describe as altruism, concern for truth, commitment to their religious obligations, etc., is all really a matter of “self-interest” in the sense that they are doing what, all things considered, *they* choose to do. But that applies equally to everyone, moral realist or not.)

Sure, our society has been Christianized. And Romanized. And Utilitarianized. And all-sorts-of-other-things-ized. For that matter, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany had also been Christianized. How’s that relevant?

It is entirely reasonable to say “yes, they did bad things, but so did some Christians” in response to an argument of the form “see how bad atheists are: these atheists did bad things”. Yes, you are quite correct that doing awful things doesn’t violate any “tenet of atheism” because atheism has scarcely any tenets. Likewise, doing awful things doesn’t violate any tenet of theism. It does, however, violate tenets of (for instance) Christianity, or of any number of non-religious ethical systems. What’s your point here? That atheism doesn’t do all the things Christianity does? No one ever claimed it does: atheism (like theism) is only only one part of anyone’s worldview. So what? Nothing about atheism (any more than about theism) requires you to have no other beliers or values.

It is beyond me how anyone can say with a straight face “The Communist Manifesto is quite clear. Religion is the enemy”. The *ruling classes* are the enemy; the CM portrays religion as an irrelevant distraction, not as The Enemy.

Yes, of course there are other things that matter besides pleasure and pain. I never said or suggested otherwise. If you wish to argue instead with Jeremy Bentham, I believe there’s a waxwork of him in one of London’s universities. (Personally, I wouldn’t want to be without poetry *or* sex.)

It’s very mystifying that I remark about EdW’s position (which is not mine; I’ve said nothing about mine) that it doesn’t (as you claimed it does) involve an appeal to a fixed human nature — and then you respond by saying “You base morality on human nature”. First, I haven’t been talking about what, if anything, *I* base morality on. Secondly, I’d just attempted to explain how EdW’s position, as I understand it, is *not* based “on human nature”. (And then you segue into some irrelevant stuff about declaring some groups non-human. Bah.)

Your comments about everyone knowing that natural law, etc., amount to this: “Deep down, everyone thinks the same as I do, but the Other Guys are insincere and dishonest, unlike me”. I don’t think there’s anything useful to be said in response to that, especially as you’ve offered no sort of evidence or argument to justify your claims about what everyone allegedly knows and how moral nonrealists (I wish you wouldn’t keep saying “relativists”; that means something different) allegedly behave.

It is not merely a matter of not wishing to do your opponents’ thinking for them. You apparently wish them to do your thinking for you. You are of course entitled to want that, and not to deign to engage with anyone unless they first prove their worthiness by stating your position for you; but if you don’t get a lot of takers, you should be aware that there are plenty of possible reasons other than that your “opponents” are stupid and ignorant and lazy.

I do not find that the objections considered and rebutted by the great philosophers are always the same as mine. Sometimes they appear to be straw men (though of course it’s possible that those really were the best objections at the time). Sometimes they’re just coming at things from a direction quite different from mine (e.g., the objections considered by Aquinas in the Summa theologiae often presuppose a particular sort of religious or philosophical position that I don’t share). Sometimes it just happens that my notion of what arguments are strongest differs from theirs.

And if *they* don’t always anticipate their readers’ objections correctly, why on earth should you expect anyone here to anticipate your position correctly? — And if, as seems obvious to me, it’s likely that even a very intelligent and well-read person making a serious attempt to guess what you might say will guess wrongly a lot of the time, why on earth should you expect anyone to do so when instead you could simply say what your position actually *is*?

(I can think of some answers, but they’re all rather unflattering.)

Well, the evidence would indicate moral relativism is true (a position we both reject), especially when we juxtapose that with something you said on another thread,

…

Reply: Not at all. It’s just the way it is. The reason I believe in objective morality is because I believe it describes the world as it is. Now if you want to know why I think that, that’s another question.

(Yes, I’d like your reasons. This is like asking someone if they know the time and having them say “yes.”)

Hunt:“It’s the way we’ve thought for years” is irrelevant to its truth value. “

Reply: Not at all. If you wish to take down a fence, find out why it was put up in the first place. If civilizations have believed this for years, find out why before saying they were wrong.

As I said above, civilizations have merrily supported moral relativism for thousands of years. By your own standard, you have a real challenge trying to overturn the idea. Even cultures that were nominally totally morally absolutist like the Holy Roman Empire were recognizably morally relative. Your hero Thomas Aquinas advocated death for heretics, a morally relative position completely dependent on his frame of reference (I hope you agree.) ALL moral systems to date have been patently relative.