You said this:
The way you phrased it leaves the impression that DCT is how Craig describes his view of morality per se. That IS a misrepresentation.

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/does-...ht-from-an-is-

So, once again, Craig grounds moral VALUES in God's nature, not DCT, and he describes DCT as God's commands to us, which form our moral DUTIES. Those duties flow ultimately from God's nature.

Yeah, I mistyped. Your rendition is what I meant.




The corrected statement:

"Even if there are no morals without god, that does not imply god exists."

however, isn't obvious because

1. If there are no morals without God and
2. There are morals then
3. God exists

There's nothing obvious about God's existence not being implied if 1.

Zumby you'll always haunt me with said dilemma

I'm pretty sure it is in many cases. Certainly some of the lower-grade arguments from atheists have the same 'flavour' I think tame is describing in the OP. How can you believe in a god who would allow X, that sort of thing.

What NotReady interpreted is:
If there are no morals (of any kind), that does not imply God exists.

What Tame Deuces meant is:
If there are no objective morals without God, that does not imply god exists

I don't think that Tame Deuces actually meant to say that there are no morals, but simply that there are no objective morals. And if NotReady defines 'objective' differently to Tame Deuces then we may have a different issue.

Tame Deuces ought to have phrased his sentence a bit better, but most people would interpret that sentence as strictly referring to objective morals anyway, so neither is to blame. Consequently neither is to feel any need to back down.

Could someone pls explain that? I iz stupid.

Heh, I thought you were joking earlier.

Euthyphro dilemma.

See, I'm even stupid enough to alert everyone.

No, I did not mean objective morals - I meant morals.

This isn't about the logical construct in the argument from morality or similar propositions, it is about how the construct is actually used. This is clearly stated in my OP and I have also emphasized it in the thread itself. Typically it will be used to argue that a) either there is god or b) no morals actually exist. NR himself has argued this on countless occasions.

This is a purely esthetic argument and has very little to do with the actual argument from morality. Basically what is being said is "the world is ugly if god does not exist". It is an appeal to esthetics, nothing else.

You crack me up Frito

The problem is if P (as a disjunctive) is true, then (a) or (b) must be true. In other words, P carries existential import if true. So if you really are granting P for argument’s sake, when we plug (a) and (b) into your initial proposition we get:

(1.a.) If God exists, that doesn’t imply God exists. Or,
(1.b.) If there are no morals, that doesn’t imply God exists.

I'm not seeing the problem here. Presumably even NotReady doesn't think that there not being any morals implies God exists.

For instance,

P2) Either a) there is a god or c) whales are mammals.

(2.a) If god exists, that doesn't imply that god exists. Or,
(2.c) If whales are mammals, that doesn't imply that god exists.

P2 is still true, just as granted. 2.b is also true, so the disjunction is true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox...al_implication
[6] if p does not imply q then p is true and q is false [...]This paradox is particularly surprising because it tells us that if one proposition does not imply another then the first is true and the second false.

So if (p) ‘there are no morals’ does not imply (q) ‘God exists’, then p is true and q is false. And since (1.a.) is false, (1.b.) is true. Hence, if (1) is true ‘there are no morals’ is true and ‘God doesn’t exist’ is true.

Wait, I thought you rejected the truth-functional interpretation of the conditional?

That's because you made what we programmers (which I was once) call a bug, or rather; you translated the statement incorrectly into your language (in this case logic).

Nobody has said IF (god exists OR there are no morals) THEN gods existence is not implied. Which, frankly speaking, is fairly obvious.

From A Concise Introduction to Logic:
When subtleties of expression are important in the interpretation of a statement, using logical operators to translate the statement may not be appropriate.

In cases like these, when the truth-functional interpretation of a conditional statement conflicts with the ordinary language interpretation, using the horseshoe operator to translate it may not be appropriate.

I picked that book up after a past issue we had with this stuff. Prior to that, I was basically looking at the instances of conflict with traditional logic and so just rejected the truth functional interpretation because of those instances. In other words, I was mistakenly under the impression that one must use it to do modern logic. But as the author notes, in some instances its usage may not be appropriate. So while I really don’t use it, (and I wouldn’t be totally surprised if I’m making a mess of it), I don’t reject it.

Well then debug it. Since you’re granting for argument’s sake what theists are asserting, I think the burden is on you to clarify what you mean to avoid a strawman.

What “there are no morals without God” means to me is something like:

(P) either God does exist and there is objective morality OR God does not exist and there is not objective morality.

Because I know that’s what theists like WLC intend. Now if you’re saying something to the effect of: even if it’s true that “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” that doesn’t mean there actually is fire. Fair enough. But, theists aren’t making that assertion.

What the author says is that in some cases the logical operators might not be the correct translation of ordinary language. If you think that is the case here, then I don't know why you are bringing in the paradoxes of material implication. More generally, this really has little to do with tame_deuces' post as far as I can see.

More generally, your statement above is kind of confused in my opinion. This is what has happened: over the last 150 years we've developed formal systems of logic with all terms explicitly defined. There is debate about the relation between these systems of logic and the inferences of terms in ordinary language. However, it would be silly to reject the formal logic systems for the inferences of ordinary language logic--it would be like rejecting calculus because it doesn't fit our prior ordinary language conceptions of how numbers work.

So yes, we do use the truth-functional interpretation in modern logic. Or, more to the point, if we don't use it, we use some equally rigorous definition. We don't just use words.

"Logicians are like frenchmen. Whatever you say to them, they translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something entirely different -- Almost Goethe, Tongue Firmly Planted in Cheek

I wish I could have done this when I worked as a programmer; When code didn't run to spec I could have just thrown the source to the customer and gone "the burden is on you to debug it, so I know what you are trying to say". But sure, this is actually a fairly simple bug.

Similar example:
1. If you do not pay, your son dies
2. You do not pay
3. Your son dies

It would commonly be said as this: "Pay us money, or your son dies". Quite similar to "It is either God or no morals", but maybe a tad more intuitive.

You are trying to translate this as validity being used as a threat: "My argument is valid, or your son lives". This is a wrongful translation, as it would mean the son always dies.

It is, however, the soundness that is being used as threat: "My argument is true, or your son lives". This would mean the son only dies when you do not pay.

Hope that clears matters up.

Well, a threat to one is a promise to another:

parent: if you put your toys away, I’ll take you for ice cream.
young t_d: are you threatening me?

Certainly, but both these imply non-overlapping parts which is the main issue. I would claim the "no god, no morals" have a certain aura of "aesthetic blackmail" about it however.