Kai Nielsen's Elephant Sighting

"For 'God commanded it' to be a morally relevant reason for doing something, let alone a definitive moral reason for doing it, it must, at least, be the case that God is good. A believer, of course, believes this to be the case, but what grounds does he have for this belief? If he says that he knows this to be true because the record of the Bible, the state of the world or the behavior of Jesus displays God's goodness, the believer himself clearly displays by his very response that he has some logically prior criterion for moral belief that is not based on the fact that there is a deity."

--Kai Nielsen, Ethics Without God, Buffalo NY: Prometheus, 1973, page 22.

Calling Philosophy's Bluff

I'm constructing a database that will be graphically renderable in a similar way to that of the chart, in my fb profile, of the history of art and philosophy movements, but instead of movements, the graphical objects will be statements. Instead of historical connections, logical connectors (claimed inference relation labels) between them will be visible at a glance or click, similar to zooming in and out of online geographical maps, thus making lines of inference instantly traceable from any particular statement to any other in the same logical thread. Logically primitive statements will be labeled ap, as in my public databases already, to designate them as Assumed Premise, until and unless something arises that is claimed to infer them.

Consequently, I'm going to be looking for individuals who want to -own- areas I'm not interested in or dont' have the time to cover (including some aspects of the atheism-theism debate), and who will fill out the entire scope of argumentation on whatever issues they may be interested in. Such individuals do not have to be formally trained in philosophy, but must have a public history of logical analysis in philosophy and must be involved in an ongoing systematic program of reading and studying philosophical journals and books.  It could -possibly- lead to a paid position eventually (I'm working on this), but don't contact me about it unless you have the time and are already involved in these activities. The project will be open source, both in programming and content, which means you must already be motivated to collect comprehensive inventories of views, arguments, objections, refutations, and so on, for your chosen issues, aside from any additional benefit you might derive from participating in this project. Open to individuals of any persuasion who are interested in all the arguments for, and all the objections to, all views---and all analyzed to the nth degree. Heavy emphasis on background assumptions, self-reference, metatheoretic issues, and philosophy of logic.

111 Years Ago Today

Of the many signs of an approaching death, perhaps the most infallible indication is the growth of large cities. City people are traditionless, matter of fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, and contemptuous of the considerate person, especially the considerate person from the country. It's a doom that grips mankind and brings the inevitable results. There's no use in hoping for the impossible. We may deplore the present, but it cannot be otherwise. If someone says that fatalism is discouraging, we reply that false hopes are hardly a source of enduring optimism. Those who are able to avoid wishful thinking can see the handwriting on the wall. We of today face---we of today are---the decline of the West.

--Redaction of Gordon Clark, summarizing Spengler's The Decline of the West. From Gordon Clark, A Christian View of Men and Things, Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 1952, pages 55-56. This gives the context of the "handwriting on the wall" quote I posted recently. Clark is summarizing Spengler, but it's clearly Clark's statement.

Being vs Knowing

The question of atheism is precisely what is the inferential or epistemic justification of the claim that God exists. Sure, given the premise that God exists, everything is existentially based on God's being and sovereignty. But in the role of atheist, I'm not questioning that conditional implication.

I'm questioning only its antecedent: that God exists.

My question would be how belief in God can be justified logically, as well as how to logically justify the notion that God is the only adequate ontological or whatever ground for morality. But by morality I just mean deciding from among the various possible proximate or ultimate consequences in relation to possible actions. If God exists, then there is a mind that can bring about ultimate consequences, and I would do well to pay attention to that mind just like any other inescapable factor I might confront as an existing finite mind, precisely and especially because of its ultimate capabilities.

Meta-Morals Already Drive the Moral Argument Debate

There are background moral values running in parallel to the process of inquiry of any kind, but the point from an atheist perspective is that mere personal preference (for whatever reasons) is enough to equal the commitment to certain values on the part of those who believe in God. Having known a number of atheists literally in my neighborhood for decades, I think this is true. In fact, in some instances I've never seen such commitment to certain values with which we obviously agreed. So I think the no morals without God thing is off target, counterproductive, and simply unneeded anyway as an argument for God. There may be a successful moral argument for God, but nothing I've seen so far seems successful.

Conditional Preferences vs. Moral Obligations and Arguments

To construe morality in any way already assumes a supervisory propriety or obligation to think in certain ways and according to certain rules and values. This is independent of first-order analysis of morality, given -any- particular construance of it, and necessarily so, to be able to recognize such propriety, analyze it, and possibly decide the question itself in the first place. I don't see how anyone can get around that. To believe in God or morality for reasons assumes the prior, independent---and most importantly: higher---epistemic authority of those reasons, one's own mind, and the principles that make those reasons viable and adequate to the conclusions they support.

An Early Darwinian Prophet of Sam Harris's Human Flourishing Doctrine

"Natural selection needs a boost, like me with a shotgun."


--Eric Harris, Columbine shooter, 1999