JanH,
I haven't seen too many posts from you since I started posting here a few weeks ago. I am assuming you are new to discussion boards like this and are not used to an open forum where thoughts and assertions are rigorously debated and verified. I will excuse the condesension in some of your statements as merely a newbie mistake and not representative of the totality of your ideas and assumptions.
I assume you mean "deist", essentially a belief in a distant creator-god who is not taking active part in human history, and do not communicate with humans or expect worship in any form.
The exact nature of the Diety is irrelevant to this discussion other than he have altruistic and unselfish characteristics. Diesm is fundamental to many traditions just as Atheism is. I am referring to diests as people who generally use modeling as a guide as opposed to atheists who generally use science and situational ethics.
Your assertions that atheist ethics implies a form of social-darwinism is untrue.
My post clearly made distinctions between various schools of thought based on atheism. Furthermore, I am not trying to draw conclusions about one atheist faction from the views of another atheist camp either. There are both good and evil atheists as with any group characterization.
But, the fact remains that social darwinism is built on atheism. Right or wrong, popular or unpopular is not the point. Millions of people have been ruthlessly slaughtered defending ideas based on atheism....that is a fact of history, like it or not. So, some atheistic ideas do rely on social darwinism as a platform to express their values. Other atheistic ideas simply do not. To imply otherwise is credulity at best and sleazy salesmanship at worst. I believe we are in agreement.
To take my statements which are diversified and qualified and reformulate them into a generalized statement of absolutes so that the straw man can more easily be destroyed, is simply going to bog the discussion down. I sincerely hope your future replies will directly deal with my actual statements.
Second, you are wrong that humanistic ethics is relativist. I suspect you have not read much about humanism.
As I stated in my preface, I'll ignore the condesension and deal with your actual statement. However, again I ask not to denegrate and bastardize your point of view with baseless condesension.
Let's take this step by step and I'll only use references to Humanists authors.....agreed? Ok.
Let's start with the Humanist Manifestoes I and II shall we? For those of you unfamiliar, a simple web search will clarify.
In the preface of both, Kurtz defines Humanism "as a philosophical, religious, and moral point of view". Agreed? OK then.
Now, just sit back and relax as this logic develops ok? Good.
The moderate Humanist wants to mitigate the more offensive ideas of of his more radical brothers. So, what does he do with statements like, Morris b. Storer who edited "Humanist Ethics"? He said, "Is personal advantage the measure of right or wrong .... humanists differ. .... Do you measure morality by results or by principles?"
Storer has accurately described the reason why so much infighting exists between Humnanists and why they have not been able to achieve consensus. The reason is the disagreement over the foundation of morality. Results or principles?
If for example the foundation is results, then morality must be adjusted time and time again to harmonize with results as they randomly occur in the natural world. In other words, as criteria fluctuates in each situation the Humanist must adjust his sense of right and wrong to accomodate the new criteria as that will likely effect the results.
This is a serious problem for the Humanist because this approach makes it impossible to qualify the truthfulness or falsity of such subjective judgements. It also gives a grossly unfair advantage to those in a position to effect social results through their greater influence on social policy. It implies that desired results by the less fortunate that conflict with those of the more powerful are less true simply because they have less influence, which of course flies in the face of other Humanist goals.
Seeing this dangerous moral terrain as leading to a battlefield where fundamental moral principles will ultimately clash, other Humanists have tried to sidestep this problem by suggesting the principle foundation.
The principle foundation assumes that a code exists, somehow outside of man but within the whole evolutionary scheme of things.
Hocutt accurately maintains that an absolute moral code cannot exist without God. He maintains that since there is no God, an absolute code cannot exist. He continues the reasoning thusly:
"Furthermore, if there were a morality written up in the sky somewhere, but no God to enforce it, I see no good reason why anybody should pay it any heed". - Max Hocutt,"Toward an Ethic of Mutual Accomodation,"in Humanist Ethics, 1980
These are not isolated views among Humanists either.
Joseph Fletcher says that "right and wrongs are determined by objective facts or circumstances, that is, by the situations in which moral agents have to decide for the most beneficial course open to choice". - Fletcher, "Humanist Ethics: the Groundwork" p.255
Schneider calls morality "an experimental art", going on to say that it is the "basic art of living well together. Moral right and wrong must therefore be conceived in terms of moral standards generated in a particular society". - Herbert W. Schnieder, Humanist Ethics in "Humanist Ethics". pp. 99-100
Kurtz says "moral principles should be treated as hypotheses" - Kurtz, ed.,"The Humanist Alternative, p.55
Your assertion that I am wrong in characterizing the majority of Humanists as ethical relativists because I have not read Humanist literature seems rather hollow, arrogant, and uninformed. I am not trying to start a fight here, I'm just wondering how you can make such statements and expect that they will go unchallenged and not be falsified?
Already Immanuel Kant demonstrated that you cannot derive an "ought" from an "is." Science and evolution is about facts of nature. Humans are perfectly free to socially construct our values, and this is where all ethical systems, theist or non-theist, comes from.
I'm glad you brought this up. Since Kant accurately says that you "Kant" :-) get an "ought" from an "is", and since science and evolution is clearly an "is"; where does the Humanist go to obtain his "oughts" if it is not from his own subjective perceptions?
Since you have already shown a propensity for attacking the source rather than a consideration of the substance, I don't feel that I am out of line in asking you to try and limit the ad Homs and straw men and characterize your responses more substantively.
