A few responses:

1) I am not a Calvinist.

2) I reject the view that Andrew seems to propose – that certain philosophical beliefs are a function of “innate” and immovable “personality” or psychology. There are various different views of the will out there, I don’t think Craig or anyone else is simply determined to hold one view over any other. Now it is not as simple as anyone saying, “I choose this view”. For the most part – especially for non-philosophers who do not actively reflect on such things – we fall into certain views as a function of our culture, the particular ordering of our passions (our “psychology”), our politics and other beliefs. Though there is also a sense in which we choose our beliefs within this context.

I’ll leave it to the readers of the blog. Does the view of oneself that Andrew proposed correspond with anyone’s experience? Do you experience yourself as having a fixed and immovable psychology, such that a set of beliefs about any manner of things (including the extent of the will) is simply a result of “how one is” and not something one “can freely choose to change”? If this were our experience, why would we ever question anything, or criticize others? If religious people are just working out their own determined psychology, what is the ground of the atheistic criticism?

Actually, this really gets to one of my points. The scientist is so used to treating everything as a thing for which a complete account can be given by simply providing an account of the complex of determined material causation that they entirely forget themselves. Let me put it another way: by being in the habit of thinking of oneself in this reduced way, Andrew simply takes it as a foregone conclusion that there is no possibility for the cultivation of the interior. Thinking that our beliefs are simply the function of a psychology and “personality” (a result of “how he is” and not something he even “can freely choose to change”), there is no consideration of the cultivation of the interiority of the subject. Instead we just robotically work out the “logical framework” which falls out of determined psychology. But, again, this completely forgets the lived experience of the subject. As a description of my experience of myself, nothing could be further from how I experience myself. Instead, quite to the contrary, I experience myself as a “task” that has to be undertaken, as an engagement between an “interiority” and others, etc etc.

So Andrew is right – it point to human subjectivity. The question, though, remains since we still need to work out human subjectivity in a way that has fidelity to our actual experience. Scientific bracketing of the questioner in asking the question will, in this sense, always result in the forgetfulness of being (Heidegger really nails this in Being and Time).

Related to this point, I don’t think I used the turn of phrase, “will themselves to autonomy”. If I did, that was a sloppy expression. My point was just this – different views of the will (autonomy and heteronomy) and different views of freedom can have an effect – and I suggested a disordering effect – on the intellect and its proper ends. And I did not take Craig’s point about autonomy to be a theoretical one, as if religion did not accord with his conception of the autonomy of the will. Rather, his point was more an assertion of the will itself (who is God to rule me? he asked) rather than a removed intellectual judgment about the nature and extent of the will.

3) My whole point was that the merely scientific view does NOT describe the world (and more importantly the subject) in a sufficient way. What is does not and cannot describe is the mode of existence of the experiencing subject – the scientist himself with his mode of existence that involves asking questions!

This does not mean that the scientific view is false. I see no reason to doubt that certain chemicals are released or certain neurons are fired when I am around someone I love. I hasten to point out that this is not news – Aquinas knew 700 years ago, and Aristotle over 2000 years ago, that the body is involved when we think and feel. So this is hardly a news flash. What modern science does is provide a much more accurate and sophisticated accounts of what the body is doing. But the applause for these scientific discoveries comes with this catch – that science was operative on the presumption that nature is orderly and lawful.

Point is – the scientific account of love is one way of explaining the phenomenon. And you are right that this way of explaining it does not exclude the experience. But my point was that this way of explaining it does not take up the experience and the experiencing subjects. So there is a kind of self-forgetfulness (forgetfulness of Being) in that mode of inquiry. Why? Because that way of explaining love is not totalizing, there are other perspectives and other modes of knowing which disclose other true things about love. And, again, my point is that the scientific mode of knowing tells us nothing about the phenomenology, so to speak, of the actual experiencing subject. It should be obvious by now that, as much as a appreciate the discoveries of science because I love truth wherever it is found, I think that science excludes discussion of the most important things precisely because it brackets the experiencing subject. What we should be aiming for is a kind of education that allows us to integrate all of these different views of the human person and the world (physics, biology, chemistry, history, psychology, sociology, literature, ethics, etc etc etc).

5) I think if we were to get rid of the language that people already have settled opinions on, we would see that the experience of love and the experience of beauty involve something more than mere “subjectivity”. In fact, it is the experience of love and beauty that precisely draw me out of my subjectivity and into something other than myself. From my own experience with love and beauty, any account that did not account for the existential experience would be incredibly lacking. One uses the word “transcendence” and the conversation ends. So don’t use the word – but be honest with yourself about your own experience when you experience genuine love or see something so beautiful that you forget yourself. My point here is that the experience of subjectivity demands an account of subjectivity that is relational. This is simply going to require a vocabulary that is beyond science. The bottom line is that you have to do metaphysics or “fundamental ontology”.

Had more time than I usually will today. Plus I’ve been thinking about all of this for a week so was able to rattle off long thoughts in about 10 minutes. Anyway, take no offense if I don’t post again on this stream for 2 weeks.

I did not mean to pack much into “God” there. Neither does Aquinas or other philosophers who make arguments for the existence of God. No one is saying you can prove the Trinity or that God is Love or anything like that, much less Christianity taken as a whole. All I think natural reason can get to is a transcendent Creator who has certain attributes (eternal, immutable, etc). So I am fine with the argument leading to deism. That would be a HUGE first step for most atheists (it was, in fact, my first step away from atheism).

“Universal forces work simply because they do.” Is that supposed to be a satisfactory account? That argument is supposed to have more force than mine?!

Who says the universe is ordered? Well, the scientist, to begin with (I am setting aside for the moment some of the complexity theories Hunt refers to). Look, the scientist takes his observations and uses them to predict future behaviors. But his observations of past events only tell us something about the general laws of nature on the assumption that nature is uniform (that is, orderly and lawful).

I don’t blame the scientist qua his scientific inquiry for not taking up the question, because he doesn’t need to. All the scientist need do is assume the uniformity of nature. But people who have not become scientistic ought to ask the question, which really is a metaphysical question. I asked it myself, and was led to theism.

Please note, I am NOT making an argument from complexity. I think those “design” arguments are bad arguments, and the frankly misunderstand the classical design arguments (like Aquinas’). My argument has nothing to do with complexity or fine-tuning. My argument is simply this: the world is orderly. Orderliness requires explanation since things might not have been orderly. An argument to a transcendent Creator is the best explanation.

A predictable response. Someone who has reduced all knowing to scientific knowing, and so has reduced any all reasons to believe something o a thin sense of empirical evidence. Since not all basically human questions can be answered in that thin reduction, you simply dismiss the “why” questions. Oh, and you solidify your argument with a slew of broad characterizations about what “religion” does.
If people on this blog find that compelling, then I am not sure what more to say.

It is why I spend a considerable portion of my time on this blog arguing against reductionism. In this stream, I phrased that in terms of self-forgetfulness and forgetfulness of being. That is the cardinal error on which most other modern errors derive (cardinal means to hinge, so all other errors hinge on that cardinal error).

The reason that question isn’t one I entertain is because it’s an unanswerable question. You can speculate until you’re blue in the face, but the fact is, any “answer” you come up with to that question, you’re pulling out of your ass. It’s pure, fact-free speculation that cannot be verified as either true, partially true, or complete hooey. That’s why I say it’s silly and pointless.

And the reason it raises ire is because this type of fact-free thinking is what gives us homophobia, sexism, racism, religious wars, acid in the face of women who dare to read books, etc. It’s certainly an interesting thought-experiment, but as soon as you start acting and living by these speculations, it gets dangerous.

I’m saying that the only kind of inquiry that has proven to reliably result in verifiable truth is scientific inquiry. I’m saying that whatever other forms of inquiry you seem to like, cannot in any useful fashion produce any sort of answer that can be verified as true/correct/real. Even if they’re useful for you and/or others, they can’t be shown to me to be true or real because they’re subjective experiences that don’t apply to other people.

If this is incorrect, then please explain how and what non-scientific methods can both reveal something that is true, and prove that that thing is true.

I wasn’t evading your question, I was answering why I think your question is unanswerable, or at the very least, why all possible answers are equally (in)valid.

But invariably, the “truths” you deduce are going to conflict with “truths” another person deduces from the same set of stimuli and experiences. Who is right? Is everyone?

And what does morality have to do with anything here? Yes, I am a moral relativist, but I reject the notion that that means I cannot logically consider homophobia immoral/unethical. Homophobia demonstrably harms people, and isn’t based either in fact or reason. Simple as that.

“…homophobia or the other things that religion allegedly encourages”

Allegedly? Do I really need to give you a list of religions that are/have been homophobic and the religious justifications for it? Are you seriously trying to call into doubt the fact that most homophobia stems from and is perpetuated by religions?

My idea of moral relativity is that there is no such thing as objective, universal morality. That it always depends on the situation, that the universe is totally amoral, and morality is totally a human construction. When I said that homophobia is immoral I meant that I believe it to be immoral. I cannot say that it is universally immoral because I don’t believe universal morality exists.

I also never said that religion was the sole or root cause of bigotry. I only said it perpetuates it, with very few exceptions.

That’s all the reply I’ve time for as I’m in the middle of moving.

I still don’t agree with your definition of moral relativity. I think you’re taking the definition to an extreme that no one practises. Or rather, you’re assuming that moral relativists are absolutely relative, rather than relatively relative. Not sure if that makes sense even to me.

You’re prevented from giving your students “F” i assume by other reasons than just that it’d be unfair (or to you immoral). I’m guessing it’d also be against the rules of the university, and you’d get in trouble for such an arbitrary judgement.

My belief about morality is that there is no objective, universal morality. There is no god who had decreed what is and is not moral. The universe doesn’t care about morality. If other sentient species exist, we can expect then to have totally and completely different ideas and beliefs about morality (if at all). Our moral sense is a product of our evolution. Humans, because of evolutionarily programmed-in basic sense of morality, build on that sense and create a system of morality. This is what I mean by moral relativity. Certain ideas about morality depend highly on culture, whereas others are more basic ideas and common to almost all cultures. In this way, morality is relative. I have personally adopted the moral system where pain, harm, suffering are immoral or wrong, and are to be avoided as far as possible. I also believe that my moral system is a very good one, and that more people should adopt a similar system. This isn’t the same as believing in an objective or universal morality.

Granted, I oppose things like homophobia, misogyny, racism, in all cultures, and believe that they are universally bad for humans. I believe this because of demonstrable harm, and the fact that I know of no instances of these that aren’t harmful. But a thing which is only sometimes harmful, but not always wouldn’t be in that same category.

The reason I don’t say that my belief that homophobia is wrong is a type of universal morality is because it’s possible that in some other species, homosexuality could actually be harmful, and opposing homosexuality could be a positive thing for that species. It’s perhaps a silly example, but illustrates the way I think about what relative morality means.

I’m certainly not an absolute relativist, but I’m far more a moral relativist than say Mormons who believe in a very rigid, unyielding, universal, and objective type of morality. They believe that homosexuality and everything to do with it is evil, wrong, immoral. Period. Sexism (at least their version of it) is moral. Period. When another culture’s mores conflict, then they are wrong. Period.

This is what I think about when I think about objective moralities, and I very much do not think or believe that way. I hope this clears things up.

Craig -
Not that labels matter all that much at the end of the day, but when you bump into a philosopher and you call yourself a relativist, they will presume you mean something other than what you meant. You sound a lot like a utilitarian. For the utilitarian, morality is based on some fact about human nature (about which you might have an evolutionary story to tell), that we pursue pleasure and seek to avoid harm or pain. There are few moral values universal to all cultures (things like racism being bad, freedom being a good, etc), but the moral theory is highly situational and so you could get some variance from place to place and culture to culture or even particular situation to particular situation. Anyway, you might read something by Peter Singer or John Stuart Mill sometime (the most famous utilitarians, one older and one contemporary).

Very pleasant, Kuffar.
Of course I am saying that atheists are wrong, but I never called them stupid. In fact, the whole point of my argument is that this is not an intellectual issue but an issue of the will. I do think many (most, all?) atheists are willful (hence my calling atheism an adolescent movement), but I never called them stupid. Keep in mind, I was an atheist for most of my life. Again, remember Plato’s allegory of the cave – there is nothing wrong with the cave-dweller’s intellect, he is just looking at the wrong things (and ultimately there is a story to be told about their wills and the ordering of their passions).