There have been countless books and movies that portray hostile alien beings inflicting damage on human beings. When those aliens are portrayed as intelligent beings capable of exercising free will, the human characters almost always morally rebuke the actions of the alien beings. It seems, then, that our human moral judgments are routinely applied to intelligent, free beings that are non-human.
In part 2, we will pick up the argument from here. We will look at how our every-day moral judgments demand a transcendent set of moral values. Post Author: Bill Pratt When we humans make moral judgments, when we call some activity morally good or bad, we think that our judgment is universal , that it transcends time, place, and even our own human species. Part 2. A Christian Apologetics Blog.
Not registered? Sign up. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Recently viewed 0 Save Search. Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content.
Marx and Ethics. Find in Worldcat. Go to page:. There can be no transcendent purpose because no widely-understood natural process can generate such purpose. Transcendent purpose is a subject for religion, and maybe for philosophy, but not for science.
The standard naturalistic conclusion is premature, however. There is one way in which transcendent, naturalistic moral purpose could, in fact, exist. If selection is the only natural source of purpose, then transcendent moral purpose could exist if selection were operating at some level more fundamental than the biological.
Specifically, transcendent purpose would require a process of cosmological natural selection, with universes being selected from a multiverse based on their reproductive ability, and intelligence emerging as a subroutine of cosmological evolution as a higher-level adaptation for universe reproduction. From this perspective, intelligent life including its moral systems would have a transcendent purpose: to eventually develop the sociopolitical and technical expertise that would enable it to cooperatively create new universes.
This creation process would enable universe reproduction, because these new universes would need to be governed by the same physical laws and parameters as the original universe, in order for intelligent life to be able to exist in them. But notions of cosmological natural selection, and of life as a mechanism of universe reproduction, are not so new or radical.
They have been under development for decades now , and are reasonably consilient with existing bodies of scientific knowledge. At any rate, my goal here is not to argue that these ideas are likely to be true, nor that they are likely to be false. Michael E. His research focuses mainly on the evolutionary origins of moral beliefs, especially those related to cooperation, punishment, egalitarianism, leadership, and sexual behavior.
If it exists, the product of cosmological evolution is increased cosmological fitness a universe which will produce, relative to other universes, more offspring. And because morality increases the benefits of cooperation which increases the technological capability of civilizations including their ability to create new universes, morality increases cosmological fitness. Then the naturalistic purpose of morality is to increase cosmological fitness?
Do you see any of these three alternatives having any innate bindingness what all people ought to do regardless of their needs and preferences and, if not, how might we best choose which one to emphasize?
Thanks for this bold commentary. Readers should consult some of your other TVOL articles for more on cosmological evolution. I am skeptical and think it is important to make a rather conventional distinction between living and non-living processes, confining evolution to living processes. In fact, the whole concept of evolution as a blind process can be seen as an artifact of confining the study of evolution to genetic evolution and leaving out individual learning and cultural evolution, which obviously have strong directed components..
Now we know that this is true not only for learning and cultural change, where it is obvious in retrospect , but it can also be true for genetic evolution e. It seemed that this person, though very physically disabled and unable to hunt or gather effectively, was cared for by her tribe for many years. Paul had now power to change those institutions.
Husbands loving their wives and caring for them—that was quite a revolutionary thing in the Greco-Roman mindset; Masters treating their slaves with compassion and respect—again, revolutionary.
They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them. Basically yes. Rather, it comes from having a heart that has been transformed by the Holy Spirit.
Joel, I am confused. It seems that you are saying that morality is indeed transcendent, but there is no codified list. You say we should reflect Christ in our day to day actions.
But there are many people who are followers of Jesus that do not agree on what constitutes a moral action in a given situation. In fact, some Christians would call the actions of other Christians immoral.
It would seem to me that in any given situation, there are certain actions that God would consider moral and others he would consider immoral. So, how do we tap into the mind of God to determine these? I might have to write a additional post on this topic of morality, Torah, etc.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Skip to content. The Apostle Paul. Reign of Terror. Friedrich Nietzsche. Like this: Like Loading View all posts by joelando11 yahoo. You might also like. Leave a Reply Cancel reply. Loading Comments
0コメント