Hitchen's Challange

[leroy]

Again, from what I already posted #255:

Those opposed to abortion rights have portrayed women as having late-term abortions out of "selfish convenience" or because they "suddenly can't get into a bathing suit." This misrepresentation of women’s decision-making with regard to abortion is always inaccurate, but especially so in cases of later abortion. Most people who terminate their pregnancies after 20 weeks wanted to have a child, and were forced to consider abortion for medical reasons. Others may be in desperate social circumstances, such as an abusive relationship, or they may be children or young teens who have delayed abortion care because they were unaware of the pregnancy or in denial.

I know why you keep pestering me on this, it's because you want to feel morally superior.

Your refusal to answer my question is telling. But that is ok most abortionists are unable to answer questions directly

 

[leroy]

That isn't torture though is it, causing necessary pain for the benefit of a patient is not remotely torture. Also we are discussing a specific example in the bible of the deity torturing a new born baby to death, simple because it was angered that the baby was conceived in an adulterous relationship. So this straw man example has no relevance.

God by definition would not cause unnecessary suffering (if that is what you mean by torture) so ether

1 you misunderstood the text

2 the story is false (never happed)

3 or whoever made the command was not God

I am personally not familiar to that passage so I don’t feel qualify to comment on it.

 

[leroy]

It clearly doesn't satisfy Hitchens's challenge.

why not?

 

[leroy]

So do you think it was moral for the biblical deity to torture a new born baby to death, just because it was angered that the baby was conceived in an adulterous affair?

ral?

No that would not be “Moral” so ether:

1 you misunderstood the text

2 the event never happened

3 whoever mande the command was not God.

I am not familiar with the story so I don’t know which of the 3 options is true

But if my alternatives where

1 accept that God tortured and innocent child to punish his parents

2 drop that specific book of the bible

I would go for option 2

Is my answer clear?

 

[Sheldon]

oh, aren't you clever, editing my post in order to misrepresent what I actually said - I always knew that you were misguided supporting homosexuality and all those other sick perversions.

I have not "supported" homosexuality, so this hateful rant would be less ironic if you could read. Gay men and women harm no one, and deserve the same rights as everyone else, and I don't care what archaic superstitions claim.

This is why atheists will never be as righteous as theists.

No true Scotsman fallacy, yet again, since you don't get to decide for anybody else what is moral.

Atheists believe that we came from monkeys, and are nothing but animals.

That is a creationist canard, and has nothing to do with atheism, all you're doing is demonstrating how utterly ignorant you are about evolution. Humans are animals, that is simply an unequivocal fact. Humans evolved from, and are apes, apes are not monkeys, that you don't understand that speaks volumes.

Therefore, when we act as primitively and savage as a dog or bear, they think it's normal and acceptable.

Nonsense, you're simply lashing out at atheists now, because I have dared to criticise your hateful bigotry about gay people. Again your vapid platitude about your beliefs compelling you to love your neighbour, are being exposed as nonsense by your own posts.

When one performs lewd acts, atheists believe that its common, healthy and inconsequential. When atheists see or hear about men having sex with men, they applaud them because they have absolutely no idea why there is not one gender in almost all species, but two?

That disjointed rant is so ignorant it's hard to know where to start. Firstly you're using ad hominem to lash out at atheists again, secondly being gay is part of who a person is, they have no more choice in it, than I as a heterosexual person have in my sexual orientation. Thirdly I don't applaud anything, it is simply none of my business what consenting adults get up to, and so I don't have the puritanical obsession with other people's love lives that you seem to enjoy.

When they see a boy dress like a girl, they praise them because they believe that a penis and vagina just appeared out of nowhere, and has no intrinsic or specific purpose - if it feels good, do it, they say. If we can't immediately see or quantify the harm, then there is no harm.

Good grief what are you blathering about? You seem so ignorant you are now conflating transvestism with being gay, I shan't even feign surprise you don't know the difference. We are all ignorant to a greater or lesser degree, but you seem to revel in your own ignorance.

All that an atheist can perceive or comprehend is that, if i didn't kill anyone, then I am a good person.

What a spectacularly stupid and pointless thing to say.

Not realizing all the perversions and subversive behaviour that they promoted and indulged in all their lives, calling 'lust' love, or obscene fetishes as freedom and prerogative.

I've read that disjointed rant 4 times, and still have no idea what you're trying to say, but as I have said several times I am promoting nothing, except equal rights. I simply don't share your bigoted hatred of people, just because they happen to be born different to me, why on earth would I.

 

[Sheldon]

why not?

Obviously because you just said that atheists are capable of any moral or ethical act that theists are, except having religious faith. So arbitrarily citing religious dogma as moral, does not address the challenge, it's just a version of a no true Scotsman fallacy.

 

[SkepticThinker]

So in other words you don't know. Why don't you just say so!

In other words, we're born with our sexual orientation.

Nobody asks how someone became a heterosexual. Why is that?

 

[leroy]

Obviously because you just said that atheists are capable of any moral or ethical act that theists are, except having religious faith. So arbitrarily citing religious dogma as moral, does not address the challenge, it's just a version of a no true Scotsman fallacy.

Hitchens sites “bad stuff motivated by faith” as an example of unethical things that a theist can do and atheist cant do

So by that logic good stuff motivated by faith should count as ethical things that theist can do and atheist cant.

So ether the challenge was fulfilled or hitchens failed too

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Hitchens sites “bad stuff motivated by faith” as an example of unethical things that a theist can do and atheist cant do

So by that logic good stuff motivated by faith should count as ethical things that theist can do and atheist cant.

So ether the challenge was fulfilled or hitchens failed too

Where does he do that?

 

[Sheldon]

No that would not be “Moral” so ether:

1 you misunderstood the text

2 the event never happened

3 whoever mande the command was not God.

I am not familiar with the story so I don’t know which of the 3 options is true

But if my alternatives where

1 accept that God tortured and innocent child to punish his parents

2 drop that specific book of the bible

I would go for option 2

Is my answer clear?

2 Samuel 12:1–31

"And the Lord afflicted the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and he became sick. And David fasted and went in, and lay all night on the ground. 17 And the elders of his house stood beside him, to raise him from the ground, but he would not, nor did he eat food with them. 18 On the seventh day the child died."

 

[Sheldon]

Hitchens sites “bad stuff motivated by faith” as an example of unethical things that a theist can do and atheist cant do

Well it's an example of a motivation an atheist may not have, but no, there is no ethical or moral action a theist can do that an atheist cannot, which was the point of the Hitch's challenge.

So by that logic good stuff motivated by faith should count as ethical things that theist can do and atheist cant.

No obviously not, as I have explained, there is no ethical or moral act an atheist cannot do that a theist can, and citing dogma as motivation doesn't change that. Though I could point out as others have, that in my life I have donated money and time to charities and charitable events, motivated entirely by the desire to help others, so entirely altruistic, I need neither the vapid threat of Hell, nor the saccharine promise of heaven in order to be motivated to do this.

So ether the challenge was fulfilled or hitchens failed too

I don't think you have understood the challenge, as performing moral or ethical acts despite the lack of theistic, or religious motivation, doctrine or dogma, was entirely the point Hitchens was making when he issued the challenge.

 

[Yazata]

From the OP:

"Name an ethical statement made or action performed by a person of faith that could not have been made or performed by a nonbeliever."

Me: "Slavery is wrong. Women should receive equal treatment. Heathens shouldn't be forced to kneel and have their throats cut."

Why could a non believer not make that statement?

Because you would have to have not only some belief, some faith in right and wrong, but also some intuition that these particular acts are wrong..

I say it often.

Because you are a moral believer, a "person of faith" that some things are right and other things are wrong.

Usually when believers are trying to justify the bible condoning the practice.

So what's at issue here isn't really what the original post asked? 'People of faith' and ethical actions motivated by their faith? Because when you get down to it, atheists are "persons of faith" too. Every human on Earth is.

If this is just another atheist anti-Bible thread, I'll agree with whoever said it (it's not in the challenge as written in the OP) that adherence to the Bible in particular isn't necessary for ethical action.

But I sensed that it had grander ambitions than that. So I merely answered the challenge as written and pointed out some beliefs that I expect are pretty universal among atheists like Hitchens that are themselves dependent on faith. Absent faith in ethical principle, people wouldn't adhere to ethics or even try to enforce ethical behavior in others.

 

[ppp]

Because you would have to have not only some belief, some faith in right and wrong, but also some intuition that these particular acts are wrong..

That is certainly something that you have said. As you haven't provided any rationale behind your thinking, I am unconvinced.

 

[Sheldon]

From the OP:

"Name an ethical statement made or action performed by a person of faith that could not have been made or performed by a nonbeliever."

Me: "Slavery is wrong. Women should receive equal treatment. Heathens shouldn't be forced to kneel and have their throats cut."

Because you would have to have not only some belief, some faith in right and wrong, but also some intuition that these particular acts are wrong..

I may be wrong of course, it happens often, but I think Hitchens was talking about religious faith. Now since I am an atheist, and also have no religious faith, and I believe there is no moral justification for slavery, that women should have the same rights as men, and that heathens shouldn't be forced to kneel and have their throats cut. Doesn't that refute your assertion?

 

[ppp]

So what's at issue here isn't really what the original post asked? 'People of faith' and ethical actions motivated by their faith? Because when you get down to it, atheists are "persons of faith" too. Every human on Earth is.

I find that people who make this assertion general have a very nebulous idea of what they mean when they say the word faith. It just turns into a big old tu quoque fallacy.

 

[Sheldon]

when you get down to it, atheists are "persons of faith" too. Every human on Earth is.

No, not in the context of the OP, as Hitchens was clearly talking about religious faith. Otherwise his challenge would be pretty meaningless. It was offered in a debate as a counter to the oft used assertion many theists make, that without belief in a deity a person cannot truly be "moral". So Hitchens challenge makes sense in that context.

 

[Yazata]

1. An atheist can say all those things (replace "heathen" with "anyone").

It requires faith in the existence of right and wrong to say them. Along with faith in one's ability to tell the two apart. Hence they would seem to be things that only "persons of faith" can say.

2. Those things are condoned by some religions, not opposed (the last one in principle rather than specifically).

Yes, that's true. We reject their moral faith because it conflicts with our own. But I'm not convinced that the superiority of our own faith has much to do with evidence or with science. It's more a matter of intuitions, of feeling.

Not so. A moral framework that enables a functioning society is essentially based on innate human traits like empathy and altruism. More advanced moral systems are further based on reason and evidence. When gods, disbelief, etc are introduced, things start to get more irrational.

I agree that our moral intuitions probably arise from our innate social instincts. But so do sex-roles (which are pretty universal around the world throughout history), aggression, warfare, territorialism and many things that contemporary people think of as being bad and seek to expunge from human psychology.

So we are left with the same question that we started with: why are some innate human traits good and other innate human traits bad?

That's the fundamental 'is-ought' distinction and it's a fundamental question for evolutionary ethics. Yes we came to think these ways through evolution, but why is it good to think some of these ways and bad to think others? The right-wrong distinction still seems to be prior to the evolutionary account and doesn't arise out of it.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

That is certainly something that you have said. As you haven't provided any rationale behind your thinking, I am unconvinced.

There is no evidence or rational way to do moral value, since such a value is a subjective personal evaluation. Now it is simple to avoid, though it never has been done before in recorded history. Just give objective evidence for something good or bad.
But if you ask how I know there is no objective evidence for good or bad. You can't observe it as it has no external sensory experience. It has no international scientific measurement standard. There is no scientific theory for how to decide what is good and bad. If you say something is good, I can simply state that is bad.

Now if you don't accept that we can always turn to science:
Princeton - News - Brain imaging study sheds light on moral decision-making

 

[Yazata]

I find that people who make this assertion general have a very nebulous idea of what they mean when they say the word faith. It just turns into a big old tu quoque fallacy.

I define 'faith' to be commitment to and reliance on beliefs that lack satisfactory justification. The idea of 'satisfactory justification' might itself be a cognitive ideal that in practice can be quite nebulous. (Justifying our beliefs leads to infinite regresses for one thing.) In practice it all often comes down to what particular people are willing to accept.

 

[lukethethird]

Your refusal to answer my question is telling. But that is ok most abortionists are unable to answer questions directly

I am not an abortionist and I do not have a need to feel morally superior, so if you want to make moral judgements that is your prerogative, not mine.