Update: Dr. Flannagan ceased his dodging the issue and responded in a more direct way in one of his later replies on June 26, 2018, so I've changed the title of the post.
Dr. Flannagan has posted several articles displaying the fallacies of the moral relativist position.
I replied to each, challenging him to explain why he thinks torturing babies to death solely for entertainment is objectively immoral.
He has made his first
response, and it is clear that he is less than forthcoming about those reasons.
I replied with 7 reasons why he need to stop focusing on the alleged errors of the moral relativist position and start providing the positive evidence for his own objectivist position. My 7 reasons are cross-posted below for convenience, followed by my point by point reply just in case any Christian thought it couldn't be done.
----------beginquote------------------------
Dr. Flannagan,
There are 7 important reasons why you should get down to
brass tacks and provide your first reason for saying torturing babies to death
solely for entertainment purposes, is objectively immoral:
First, I’ll do what philosophers routinely do, and concede
my alleged errors *solely for the sake of argument*.
Second, you are the one asserting that baby-torture is
objectively immoral. Suspiciously, you
never get around to saying exactly why, you rather prefer to just balk at the
fallacies in the moral relativist objections.
But it wouldn't matter if you were correct in your criticisms of me,
that doesn't fulfill your own burden to provide positive evidence/argument in
favor of what you believe.
Third, despite your
bible telling you that unbelievers are either completely incapable of, or else highly
unlikely to, engage in correct thinking with respect to godly truths (1st
Corinthians 2:14), you still provide many arguments to non-Christian
philosophers and audiences. I may
therefore safely assume that, even if you judge me to be wrong in many of my
views, this will no more slow you down in setting forth argument to me, than it
slows you down from setting forth argument to other equally spiritually blind
atheists.
Fourth, you and I are not conversing in private, where you
might otherwise think it legitimate to say my ignorance renders continued
dialogue pointless. There are obviously
many Christians less educated than you, who are reading your posts here, and
they would benefit from seeing your reasons for saying baby-torture is
objectively immoral. Even if you
believed that your revealing here your first reason to say baby torture is
objectively immoral, wouldn't benefit *me*, you could not hold such a negative
view of all the other Christians who learn from your posts, and who, like most
Christians, cannot imagine how they could demonstrate any act to be ‘objectively’
immoral apart from merely quoting the bible.
You are helping thousands or perhaps millions of Christians when you
answer my challenge directly.
Fifth, you actually can't really say for sure whether God
would or wouldn't open my understanding if you gave your first reason for
saying baby-torture is objectively immoral.
Don't you believe that God somehow works through your online posts, even
if He doesn't make them totally inerrant?
And if you believe in Ezra 1:1 and Daniel 4:32-33, you cannot deny the
ability of the bible-god to make even his enemies believe whatever he wants them to (i.e., Cyrus came
to believe the Jews should be freed from exile, Nebuchadnezzar came to believe
he should eat grass). Don't
underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit as he works through your posts.
Sixth, it doesn't matter how much you try to justify refusal
to answer my below-repeated challenge directly, you can hardly
"expect" a moral relativist to appreciate your reasons for saying
baby torture is objectively immoral, if you constantly refuse to reveal those
reasons. It would be any different than
the atheist who “expects” Christians to appreciate why he thinks God doesn’t
exist...while never getting down to the business at hand and actually
specifying those reasons.
Seventh and finally, your continual refusal to actually
deliver the actual goods could be reasonably construed as your refusal to “correct
those who are in opposition…” (2nd Timothy 2:25), or to "provide
a reason for the hope that lies within you (1st Peter 3:15), or a refusal to “contend
earnestly for the faith” (Jude 3). At
the end of the day, your willingness to do apologetics eventually obligates you
to do something more than merely point out inconsistencies in the non-Christian
view and start laying the basis for your own positive case, a thing that
doesn't require you to mention anybody else's fallacies or misunderstandings.
Now that you've discovered that the benefits of revealing
exactly why baby-torture is 'objectively' immoral, outweigh any perceived
risks, let's try this again:
You believe that torturing babies to death solely for
entertainment purposes, is objectively immoral. Why?
Because the bible tells you so?
Because most humans say it is immoral?
Because you personally find it revolting?
Because all strong feelings about a moral issue necessarily
come from God?
Some combination of the above?
Some other reason or reasons?
I cannot fulfill my burden to provide direct evidence of
atheism by hiding behind continual attacks on the morality of the bible-god,
and YOU cannot fulfill your burden to provide direct evidence that baby torture
is objectively immoral, by constantly hiding behind complaints that the moral
relativist position is fallacious.
Let everything be done decently and in order.
I look forward to further dialogue with you,
Barry
---------endquote---------I now reply to him in point by point fashion
If that is true, then you should be able to establish the correctness of
the proposition “torturing babies to death solely for entertainment
purposes is objectively immoral” WITHOUT relying on what anybody else
“believes or accepts” about that subject.
Ok two things here. First, that inference doesn’t follow:
Even if a proposition is objectively true, it doesn’t follow that a person can
demonstrate or establish its truth.
That's irrelevant. You've already committed yourself to the premise that child-torture and rape are objectively immoral. If you are being serious, then you should have reasons for thinking such acts are objectively immoral. Please reveal those reasons.
Second, no proposition can be established “without relying
on what someone else believes or accepts”.
So under your logic, I cannot establish "trees exist" is objectively true without
relying on what someone else believes or accepts. Nice going.
This because proof and argument
always involves inferring a conclusion from prior premises, that one’s
interlocutor believes.
On the contrary, I see no reason to think I'd have to get a second opinion if I draw the conclusion that 2+2=4.
If you can’t appeal to what a person believes you can’t
prove anything at all.
Ahhh...now we are starting to discover that whatever your proof for the objective immorality of baby-torture is, you are going to have to depend on at least something I currently believe in order to prove the proposition. That's fine, but you talk all cocky about objective morals, as if they would be true even if no humans believed in them. Well pardon me, but if you need to appeal to something the interlocutor believes, and yet none of them believes something you need to make your case, you are shit out of luck.
For example, you can’t establish that the physical world
exists independently of anyone perceiving it without appealing to what someone
else accepts or believes. Nor can you establish that events existed in the past
independently of whether on remembered them or not without appealing to
something some else believes or accepts.
Fine: do
whatever you think must properly be done to establish that fatal baby-torture is objectively immoral.
Indeed, the dictionaries tell us that “objective” means
“not dependent on the mind for existence”
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/objective
Unfortunately, you don’t define technical terms in a
discipline like meta ethics by looking at dictionaries. Dictionaries only tell
one common usage, they don’t necessarily convey the way terms are used or the
precision they are used with within a discipline.
But you constantly use the word "objective" in connection with "morals" in the articles you expect the average person to read. Yet you never carefully define "objective" in any way that might suggest you mean anything more narrow than what the dictionary means. Indeed, your constantly analogies to the objective existence of physical things like the world make perfect sense upon the dictionary definition.
But it also seems to me this definition is mistaken as its
too broad. Take the judgement: “John was in pain when Billy smashed him in the
head with a brick” that judgement is either objectively true or false, by
believing or willing John wasnt in pain doesnt make it so. However, seeing pain
is a mental state its truth also depends on the existence of minds. So mind
independence isnt a good definition of objectivity. What objectivity requires
is that a judgement is incorrect independently of what philosophers call our
evaluative attitudes towards it.
Ok, so go ahead and demonstrate that the judgment of the sociopath who says "torturing babies to death solely for entertainment is morally good" is
incorrect independently of what philosophers call our evaluative attitudes towards it.
Our evaluation that the proposition is true or
false or our evaluation that the action is good or bad. Evaluative judgements
are obviously mental judgements, they are a specific type of mental act and not
the same thing as mind generically. Consquently, doesn’t require complete mind
independence.
Then perhaps my rebuttals to you did some good, and maybe now you'll update your attacks on moral relativity by reminding the reader that you were using "objective" in a philosophically narrow sense not as broad as the dictionary definition. You can hardly blame a reader for assuming your unqualified words take their normative dictionary definitions.
So go
ahead…demonstrate that that the proposition...
Sure when you demonstrate physical objects exist without
appealing to something someone believes or accepts.
That is a willful failure on your part to fulfill your own burden of proof. You talk all day every day about the fallacies of moral relativism, sort of like the atheist who talks all day about the evils of the bible-god.
But you never get around to stating your reasons for saying baby-torture is objectively immoral, sort of like the atheist who never gets around to stating the reasons for saying god doesn't exist.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that you are correct about this need to appeal to what somebody else believes in order to "demonstrate" something: If you need to appeal to things you think are in my mind, feel free to do so. Do whatever you need to do to prove the proposition that fatal baby-torture solely for the sake of entertainment is objectively immoral.
Does your inability to do so show that mean the physical
universe depends on my mind for existence? Was I around at the big bang, if I
died tomorrow would that mean you cease to exist and the whole universe is
annihilated?
Sorry, hard to figure out what you are saying.
Another dictionary defines ‘objective’ as:
“having reality independent of the mind”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/objective
So go ahead…demonstrate that that the above-cited moral proposition has “reality independent of the mind”.
See above about relying on dictionaries to settle the meaning of technical terms and the mistaken definition your relying on
You know…just like you also don’t need any human input whatsoever to
demonstrate anything else that you would characterize as having
“objective” existence, such as trees.
That again doesn’t follow, obviously trees exist
independently of minds, if every human being in the world committed suicide
tomorrow the olive tree in my garden wouldn’t pop out of existence. However,
it’s not true that you can demonstrate the existence of trees without appealing
to something humans know or accept.
I disagree, but in the interest of furthering the argument, fine, then appeal to something I know or accept, to help you demonstrate the objective immorality of torturing babies to death solely for entertainment.
Your confusing the conditions necessary for something to
exist with the conditions necessary to know something exists. Not the same
thing.
On the contrary, you mislead the reader with your many uses of "objective" which you apply not only to morals but to physical realities that people commonly refer to as existing "objectively", such as when you appeal to the reality of the physical world. Will you admit you could have made clearer your narrowly nuanced use of "objective", or will you insist that the average reader obtain their Ph.d in philosophy before they dare presume anything whatsoever about your use of language?
If you start asking me questions, you’ll be violating the definition of
objectivity. You don’t need my input on anything, nor do you need to
know whether I accept or believe any certain way about it, to achieve
your own stated goal of demonstrating the above-cited moral proposition
to be objectively true.
That again doesn’t follow for the reasons I cited above, pointing out
judgements are true or false independently of whether we think they are,
doesn’t entail one can demonstrate or know they are without human input.
You’ll need to fix up that fallacious inference before your objection has any soundness.
And you'll need to update your attacks on moral relativity so that the readers, most whom presumably don't have a Ph.d in philosophy, will recognize that when you say "objective", you don't mean the sense that the dictionary provides.
You could also
clear things up by directly answering the question of why you think said
baby-torture is objectively immoral in the first place.
Is it immoral
because the bible tells you so?
Is it immoral
because most humans say it is immoral?
is it immoral
because you personally find it revolting?
Is it immoral
because all strong feelings about a moral issue necessarily come from God?
Some other reason
or reasons?
Unfortunately those questions assume the same mistake I
mentioned above, your first question is about why I think a certain action is
wrong it asks what my grounds or reasons for believing something is.
Um.. Sir...asking you
what grounds or reasons you have for believing something, cannot possibly constitute a "mistake", unless you think it is a 'mistake' for people ask you why you believe what you believe? Is there some different Dr. Matthew Flannagan who engages in apologetics, who is different than you? You are
C L E A R L Y being evasive.
Those questions were legitimate even assuming I misunderstood you to a shocking degree.
The problem is you then in the next few sentences take that
to be the same as asking the question of why an action is immoral.
Ok, then forget my allegedly fallacious understandings and
give your reasons for saying baby-torture is objectively immoral. We can worry about my ignorance and misunderstanding of your stated reasons after you state them and then
after I reply to your stated reasons. You never know, I might address your reasons in ways that aren't fallacious.
That’s just a bad inference, I can ask a person why they
believe sub atomic particles exist, and they might reply they believe it
because they were taught it in a physics class.
So apparently answering the question directly is actually possible, and in our case, you just don't wanna.
That doesn’t mean that sub
atomic particles exist because science teachers say so.
Agreed, but the direct answer clears the way to begin a more penetrating analysis. While conversely, simply refusing to get in the ring and contenting yourself to shout from the sidelines has the clear benefit of preventing you from getting steamrolled.
If they exist, they
existed a long time before science teachers or even humans came on the scene.
Ok...then if there are reasons to say baby-torture is objectively immoral, those reasons existed long before humans existed. You are forced to agree to that by reason of your presupposition that God's morals have been the same from all eternity and were no different back before he created anything.
So, sorry, but your objections here seem to be just based on
a series of non sequiturs.
And I'm equally sorry that you did a rather unconvincing job of evading a direct challenge. It doesn't matter if I have a worse understanding of your position than a two year old would: That would not intellectually or morally compel you to stay quiet about the reasons you think baby-torture is objectively immoral.
Dr. Flannagan, why can't you just forthrightly acknowledge that you think torturing babies to death is objectively immoral because the bible tells you so?
It doesn't matter if that simplistic basis could be shot out of the sky...it would still correctly reflect what you believe, wouldn't it? It is dishonest to keep your true reasons hidden because you are afraid they can be refuted.
Update: June 26, 2018: Flannagan made another reply. I responded briefly at his website and include that below, followed by more more lengthy point by point response:
------quote-----
Dr. Flannagan,
I provide a point by point response to you at my blog, but for now,
it’s probably better to limit my posting here to resolving one of our
important disagreements necessarily involved in the objective morality
debate.
You have stated repeatedly in prior posts that when the moral
relativist characterizes somebody else’s moral viewpoint as “wrong”, the
relativist is necessarily implying an objective standard of moral right
and wrong.
For example,
you said that objectivity is presupposed when somebody admits any certain moral view was “mistaken”.
“Stephen Evan’s similarly stresses that we assume or presuppose that
moral judgments are the “kind of thing we can be mistaken about” and we
criticise societies and other people for making mistaken moral
judgments, all of which presupposes objectivity.”
“…or the fact we think some cultural mores or moral systems are worse
than others and so on, all of which presuppose objectivity. Or the
fact we engage in debate with other people over what is the right thing
to do.”
Your most direct statement on the subject was:
“…I put forward a hypothetical situation where a community endorsed
the torture of children and asked whether you think a society which
judged it was ok to do this was mistaken in doing so, or whether you
thought there judgment it was permissible to torture children was
correct. In fact, I put the challenge to you in the post? Most people
judge that such a society does make a mistake, which shows that they
presuppose that moral judgements are objective.”
I believe you were wrong to assume an objective standard of moral
right and wrong is being presupposed when the moral relativist declares
that somebody else’s viewpoint is “wrong”.
That is because there are numerous examples from real life in which
we find it totally legitimate and justified to declare a person “wrong”
on the basis of an admittedly non-objective, subjective or entirely
relative standard.
Suppose I impose a 9 p.m. bedtime on my 7-year old daughter on a
school night. When she says “I don’t have to do what you say”, I reply
“you are wrong”. Is my assessment legitimate? After all, there is
nothing in nature, any religious text, our deepest moral intuitions, or
any viewpoint that most human beings agree on, which specifies what
precise bedtime a child must obey on a school night, or specifies that a
child must obey just anything the parent says at any time.
That situation is 100% subjective, yet it is legitimate for the dad
to characterize his daughter’s rebellious attitude in that context as
“wrong”. Can you agree with me that “you are wrong” can be a legitimate moral
criticism even in the absence of any objective moral standard?
I honestly cannot imagine how you could possibly infuse my chosen
bedtime of 9 p.m. in this context with any objectivity, given that
bedtime for kids is something parents wildly disagree about, precisely
because there is no objective standard to apply in the first place.
---------endquote-----
here is my more detailed point by point reply:
Barry, you seem to have missed the key point of my last post.
Which is your suggestion I am under some kind of burden to prove this is
simply false.
But you'll have to agree the
reader would be a bit curious that while you denying having a burden
here, you still chose to proceed as if you believed you did.
Apparently, I struck a chord.
To demonstrate why I think its objectively wrong to torture babies
for fun let me ask you some questions. These are to elucidate some
premises which hopefully you and many of my readers will agree upon
1. If someone tortured a baby for fun, they grabbed a two year old
and beat it repeatedly with a belt in front of you so it was bleeding
and screaming in agony, and laughed as they did it repeatedly saying “I
am doing this purely for fun, I have no other reason” would you d you
honestly say that a person who did this did no wrong?
In my opinion, that child-abusing man would be morally 'wrong'.
2. If as I suspect the answer to the above question is no, suppose the
person who was whipping the flesh of the child in front of you told you
he thought his action was perfectly ok, and there was nothing wrong with
it, and that he was part of a community whose mores endorsed this sort
of behaviour, would you change your opinion and claim that what he did
wasn’t wrong, but was morally perfectly acceptable?
Inapplicable, see above.
Now I suspect, unless you’re a total Psychopath, that your answer to
both these questions is “No”.
It wouldn't
matter if I was a total Psychopath...your duty is to "demonstrate". You
aren't "demonstrating" but only "assuming" if you simply assume total
Psychopaths hold only those morals that are objectively wrong.
If it is however then, you have claimed
both that (a) the action is wrong and (b) individuals and communities
who judge it isn’t wrong are mistaken. If (a) and (b) are correct then
morality is objective.
Incorrect. I often tell
my school-age daughter she is "wrong" to disobey my imposed bedtime of 9
p.m. on a school night. But this does not imply she is objectively
wrong, and my calling her "wrong" doesn't imply that I think she is
violating some objective standard of morality. My choice of what time
she should go to bed is utterly relative, and differs wildly from parent
to parent. There is no natural law that says 9 p.m. is the proper
bedtime for kids on a school night. There is nothing in the bible that
says 9 p.m. is the proper bedtime for kids on a school night. And there
is nothing in our deepest human intuitions that says 9 p.m. is the
proper bedtime for kids on a school night.
Likewise,
there is nothing in natural law, the bible, or our deepest human
intuitions, that says a child should obey just anything at all which
their parent might command at any time. So my choice of bedtime for
her is completely subjective. Yet it is also legitimate and reasonable
to characterize her rebellion toward this bedtime as "wrong".
Other
examples, for the limited purpose of justifying wrongness on the basis
of a completely subjective standard could be adduced: We today spell it
"connection", but back in the 17th century, the "correct" English
spelling was "connexion". But if any child in America today wrote it
that way on a spelling test, the teacher would declare it "wrong". It
would be legitimate to declare such test answer "wrong", meaning "wrong
for reasons limited solely to the culture we currently live in".
Nobody would argue that by saying "wrong", the teacher is logically
implying that there is an objectively correct way to spell that word. So
you are incorrect to automatically accuse the moral relativist of
necessarily implying an objective standard of moral right and wrong when
they classify disobedience to some moral as "wrong".
Of course you could respond by biting the bullet and saying that in your
opinon a person who beats a child in that way for fun does nothing
wrong at all. But I would take that as a reduction ad absurdium of your
position.
Why? It IS my opinion that this
form of child abuse is morally wrong. And in light of your other
presuppositions, such as that I'm not god, and therefore cannot know
everything there is to know about morality, casting my view as "opinion"
constitutes justified reserve.
I suspect that many of my readers who you are so concerned
about would have a similar response.
I don't
see the relevance. Unless you concede that an objective moral can be
established by something which "many" people have to say, then what
"many" of your readers would conclude about my viewpoint, has no
relevance here.
If you have to say that there is
nothing wrong with actions I spelt out in 1 and 2 to justify the kind of
religious scepticism you want to justify then your position is
implausible and to put it mildly close to sociopathic.
I'll
play devils advocate here: I detect an assumption in your argument
that you haven't justified just yet: On what basis would you judge
"implausible" the moral viewpoint that says it is good to torture
children solely for entertainment purposes? Your reference to
"sociopathic" seems to indicate that your basis for implausibility here
is what the majority of humans would have to say, since of course
"socipath" refers to a person whose morals contravene those held by the
majority of human beings.
Either admit your case for
objective morals depends to some extent on what the majority of human
beings feel is morally good/bad, or justify your intuitive disagreement
with the sociopath without appealing to what the majority of human
beings feel is morally good/bad.
Indeed, it is only a
sociopath who seriously thinks it good to torture babies to death solely
for entertainment, unfortunately, you are going to need something more
than "most people would disagree with you!" before you can show the
sociopathic position to be objectively immoral.
Perhaps you think I am under some kind of burden to prove 1 and 2.
You
are. He who asserts, must prove. If you assert fairies exist, I'm
under no obligation to believe they do until after you have provided
some evidence in support. That principle applies across the board,
including applying to atheists who assert god's non-existence.
You think that when we see a child beating flayed with such intensity
that its skin is bleeding and its screaming in agony we can’t claim
that’s wrong until we have provided some kind of scientific empirical
justification, cooly examining all the data, solving the is ought
problem, and so forth. And that until someone does this the rational
stance is to say that the person does nothing wrong at all.
First,
"cooly" implies impartial unbiased research. So by saying we need not
'cooly' examine all the data, you are saying we need not conduct partial
and unbiased research on the matter of whether torturing children to
death solely for the sake of entertainment, is objectively moral or
immoral. But that implies justified reliance on your own existing moral
prejudices/biases. And whatever you conclude you arrive at by relying
on your own existing moral prejudices/biases, that conclusion is hardly
"objective".
You might think this, but I would just dispute that it seems pretty
evident to me that’s simply an absurd and ridiculous stance to take.
So
your case for 'objective' morals is necessarily premised, to some
extent, on what "seems" to be absurd. That's rather subjective of you.
I
have already explained why I contend that your suggestion that anyone
who asserts something carries some kind of burden of proof in my first
post.
Yes indeed. That's why you have a burden
to demonstrate whatever you assert to be true, as would be the case
with anybody else.
So until you actually respond to these criticisms you cant just
assert that the burden of proof is on the person who opposes child
flaying and the sadist’s position is the default one
Strawman
fallacy, I never said the child flaying or sadist's position was the
default. I've made clear in this reply that a) I agree with you that
such child abuse is morally wrong, but b) I am not necessarily implying
the existence of an objective standard for morals in saying that,
anymore than the teacher implies an objective standard for how to spell
"connection"
seems to me to be
mistaken,
Ok, sadism toward children solely for
entertainment "seems" to be mistaken to you. And sadism toward
children solely for entertainment "seems" to be morally good to an
extreme sociopath. How would you "demonstrate" whose position was more
objective? I have an answer: appeal to what the vast majority of
people believe. But that comes at the price of you admitting error, and
admitting that what has "seemed" immoral to the vast majority of human
beings, is a legitimate basis upon which to label their moral views
"objective".
its similar to the position of a person who says they won’t
believe the world isn’t a figment of there imagination until someone
proves it actually exists. Or the solipsist who refuses to believe other
people actually exist until someone proves it. Or the person who
demands you prove the proposition “nothing is red all over and blue all
over at the same time”.
I realize you feel strongly about your moral outlook.
