Self-evidence is something that is obviously true; without need for explanation. So it's self-evidently true that you and I are separate minds conversing with each other. It's self-evident that the universe exists, etc. One can call that into doubt with skeptical arguments, but that assumes those arguments bear content and will be understood which is ironically, also self-evident.

A properly basic belief is something that doesn't require justification. Plantinga argues that God can be held to be a properly basic belief---it's basically a defeater for the pressure to prove it from atheists. It's not self-evident---some don't believe in God but I do---yet it doesn't require me to justify having it. I don't need to provide evidence for it, etc.



I think you're missing the full extent of the argument somewhat. This is not an argument to establish moral realism. We haven't really touched on those; I think there are some good ones. Regardless if moral realism is actually true, my argument is to show that naturalists cannot be moral realists.


It's interesting you bring this up, because the divide is in fact religious in nature and the examples you used highlight the main part of my argument. You would be hard pressed to find a Christian or Muslim or Jew who believed abortion, incest, pedophilia or gay marriage was morally permissible. Certainly exceptions exist, but in general the divide here in almost every example is between those with religious affiliation or belief and those that rely primarily on science and empiricism. The reason why pro-choice people consider abortion morally permissible is because they do not hold the belief that a foetus has a separate life of it's own and religious people do. The reason why some people don't consider gay marriage morally permissible, or in some cases even ontologically possible, is because they believe marriage is a spiritual union between a man and a woman sanctioned by a God and others do not. Really what the major difference is and what my argument shows is that people who believe in God tend to believe in an objective moral standard of behavior that is contingent on God and those that don't appeal to pain/suffering/inconvenience/tolerance/acceptance/equality or in other words, values that western countries hold in high regard based on our legal system and historical trends. The problem is of course that those values cannot be shown to be grounded on anything but preference, or moral relativist, or subjective moral grounds, and eventually such value systems eat themselves ("tolerance is one of the highest virtues unless of course the person disagrees with this and this, we can't tolerate that!")



Clearly that is not the case as your examples highlight. The divide is in fact mainly religious in nature, not totally contingent upon biology or culture. There is anything but a moral normativity in cultures with widespread discrepancies in basic moral beliefs and there can be shown to be a general normativity in religiously homogenous cultures. Western countries having arguably the widest diversity express this the most.

I'll come back to the rest of your post later, but I want to respond to this quickly. Obviously there is little contention in our society about pedophilia or incest, but on the other topics your claim that I would be "hard-pressed" to find a Christian, Muslim, or Jew who believe that abortion or gay marriage should be legal is false.

On abortion, see Pew:



On gay marriage, also Pew:



These stats are for Americans. Distributions for other countries will be different, but that is to my point. However, it should be clear simply from the fact that these issues are so contentious in the US that the contention does not correlate to religiosity. A large majority of Americans are of Abrahamic religious faith (70% are Christian, according to Pew). If being religious was a strong predictor of opinion on those topics then they wouldn't be as contentious as they are. Your claim that the divide is primarily religious in nature doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

I don't need to provide evidence for the undetectable gnomes living in my closet. Recently I learned that if you pray to them, you get better luck. Also, if you misbehave, they always know.

I think we all know that this is your argument: not for moral realism, but against the conjunction of naturalistic atheism and moral realism. The reason why so many have asked for you to explain your own theory of moral realism even so is because your arguments for this claim relies on a specific version of moral realism. For instance, your claim that moral realism implies that immorality be punished only follows from some moral realist theories, not all. Thus, to establish your conclusion about naturalists you must show that all those other moral realist theories are themselves wrong as well or you fail to demonstrate a contradiction between naturalistic atheism and moral realism.

I think DODN has made an argument that moral realism and atheism are incompatible, but he's also claimed that belief in moral realism as he's described it is "properly basic", which is a different claim. I don't know how someone can say on the one hand that belief in moral realism is properly basic and on the other that you aren't trying to establish moral realism as true. Anyway, my recent posts were against the claim that moral realism is a "properly basic belief".

The first problem with this is the conflation of illegality and immorality. You would be hard pressed to find a Christian, Muslim or Jew (non-nominal) who finds these things morally permissible. It would be easy, and I don't want to get sidetracked here, to point out to exceptions that all three holy books explicity ban these types of behavior. There is certain erosion of religious belief and practice in western countries and with it the increase in large percentages of people who would nominally describe themselves as religious in some sense without realizing what their holy books say. You wouldn't find the same discrepancies in belief in devoutly religious and homogenous nations such as Afghanistan.

The second problem is that the cultural meta on being against these things is that one is politically incorrect, and so the results are very likely skewed due to this bias. People are much more likely to say one thing and believe another regarding hot button issues such as these.

The third issue is that pedophilia and incest are increasingly being argued as acceptable in some forms. In fact, precisely the same argument that is/was used to normalize homosexuality is being used to normalize incest. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to argue against the legal or moral permissibility of safe sex between two related consenting adults in the incest case and argue for it in the homosexual case. Birth defects are the primary source of contention here, so is homosexual incest ok but heterosexual incest not?

As for pedophilia, and I want to stress clearly I am not defending it---I believe it is despicable---there is clear evidence that a significant percentage of victims look back on their abuse positively. This angle is being used to argue for its permissibility in some cases.

That's one of the major problems with polls; they don't tell anywhere near the real story. You can also easily see with just these few examples how subjectively and arbitrarily held values devolve and unravel to be non-universal and thus non-applicable.

You've tried this multiple times and of course you are, without realizing it, conflating a contingent truth with a necessary one.

If you insist.

I thought I was relating to you, but you keep saying we're discussing truth. Not sure where I said truth or why I would refer to truth in a conversation about undetectable things.

Beer is objectively good. I would never say otherwise.

Some beer is objectively better. There's a gradient of objective goodness. Because, why not?

Well, I kinda like the example. "Silly" examples can often demonstrate an argument in a healthy light.

Like, how complicated do you want to make a discussion on beer. I mean, you could, if you wanted to make into an absolute debate on physics and the limits of reductionism ("what is beer", "what is hops", "what is plants", "what is matter", "what are molecules", "what are atoms", "what are quantums", ??)... you could make it into a debate on existence and go full Heidegger and dasein (yes, I know it is not a verb) the **** of that beer, and then quarrel about ontology and metaphysics.

And those debates are neither uninteresting or useless. But they're not really a debate on beer anymore, they're debates on the limitations of knowledge (epistemology) or reality of the universe (ontology).

A debate on exactly what beer is could be useful. Are we using semantics, taxonomy, regulations, tradition, invention, imagination... are we talking about the same thing, are the different things we mean sometimes the same, are the seemingly identical thing we mean sometimes different? I mean if one person holds that beer can be alcohol-free and the other person disagrees, then 90% of the debate on beer from a medical perspective is meaningless.

Is there "objectively good beer"? Perhaps not. But there are certainly biological and chemical limits to what beer could ever be construed as good. Can one beer be "objectively best"? Well, not for all people because tastebuds differ a lot, but there could be an objectively best beer for a single person that isn't necessarily subjective as much as it is unavoidable. "Is beer unhealthy?". That can be a straightforward medical debate, a convoluted cultural debate or the slalom of engaging in both at the same time.

So how do you have a good debate on beer? Obvious jokes aside, I think it's by keeping it to the topic, taking the arguments of the other person in good faith and never assume the other person's thoughts for him.

Sorry for ruining your argument of simplicity, but as said... I like silly examples. It makes it simpler for me to present my views on the framework we conduct this debate on morals in. I think we often put morals on a lofty pedestal in many debates, but that's not necessarily the best place for it.

Good point. We can find Pew data that asks about morality also. I think you'll agree that the "not a moral issue" response implies a belief that something is permissible.

For abortion:



On homosexuality:



The two sets of surveys are 8 years apart so comparisons might be tricky, but nevertheless we see the same patterns. There are plenty of religious people who hold that abortion and homosexuality are morally permissible, despite your claim to the contrary, and there is also a great deal of variation in opinion within religious traditions, e.g. between evangelicals and mainline protestants.

This is nonsense.

This is not actually an issue for the claims I'm making. Actually, it would support the claims I'm making, since I'm arguing against your claim that there is wide agreement on moral issues and that this agreement is the result of a shared metaphysical intuition. That said, I am skeptical that "pedophilia and incest are increasingly being argued as acceptable in some forms."

How can you say this ?"There are plenty of religious people who hold that abortion and homosexuality are morally permissible " ? Your own numbers show most of the questions to which the "morally permissible" is elucidated are in the low teens .

This is the inexorable miasma of truth by abstract randomness; it appears that everyone, in some manner, is attempting to load the dice.

And yes, I am aware of the third column to which must be explained how this event is in the realm of the amoral. There are some in that column who might be subscribing to the idea of "judge not" but the column , by some type of legerdemain can not be a confirmation of what an examiner desires.

With statistics one might see the "fire within" but in no way should this type of presentation (randomness) be used for social or individual planning or enforcement. Individual mortality comes through through the individual Man which cannot be gainsaid or approved through the speciousness of the roll of the dice .

No I don't. I don't think dipping my genitals in liquid nitrogen is a moral issue but I wouldn't do it and I wouldn't recommend or be okay with anyone else doing it either. That's why there is a column that says 'morally acceptable.' And if you'll care to notice there is no number higher than 20% in that column, and most of them are under 10%.



How so? They get these kinds of problems in polls all the time, especially sex-related ones. People have a tendency to either exaggerate or be shy about their answers. In polls about abortion, homosexuality etc (some of them issues where you can lose your business and livelihood if you answer wrong) you would expect to see similar things.



It is a claim you made, that's why I included it.

The nonsense intensifies.

This is profoundly silly. "Permissible" in this context means morally permissible. Are you arguing that the people who answered that it's "not a moral issue" think it's immoral? Because that was the question we were trying to answer.

In any case, here's another data point, from Gallup, with no caveats:

Just to be blunt, so you know where I'm at, between the "properly basic belief" thing, you claiming that you're not really taking a position on whether moral realism is true despite clearly taking such a position, and now your response to this data, I'm having trouble sustaining the belief that you are participating in this conversation in good faith. I think there are interesting discussions to be had here, but I'm not really that interested in arguing the epistemological value of survey research from first principles. So I may demure from going too much further down this particular rabbit hole.

Ya, morally acceptable, which has by far the lowest numbers out of the three columns. 'Not a moral issue' does not equate with 'morally permissible,' as my above example shows. It means 'not a moral issue' or 'lying outside the realm of the question.'

It would be silly to say dipping my penis in liquid nitrogen was 'morally acceptable' and 'not a moral question' in the same sentence. You're reading more into that third column than is really intelligibly allowed.

No I am not claiming that. I believe moral realism is true. My argument that naturalism is inconsistent with moral realism does not depend on whether or not it is true. Hopefully that is clear now.

I'm not going to have a poll war. Poll results, as the last Presidential election showed, mean very very little. People can be nervous, the question can be misinterpreted, people can be worried about what comes of their answer, people can be trolling or uninterested. The fact of the matter is the vast majority of non-nominal religious people share basic moral beliefs. As the level of devotion to said religion increases, the more sharing of moral beliefs will occur. This is self-evident and doesn't need to be proven or justified. I already made a caveat for exceptions, so pointing to poll results where 10% of people agree means I'm on point.

That last graph is really proving my point. We can take Jews out of the question if you'd like, I'm fine with that. There is a significant decrease in moral acceptability as you go to the right of the poll. From high 70's low 80s for no religion to high teens low 20s for Mormons. There is some overlap, but my general statement about people with a God and without a God having widely polar moral views is clearly the case from your poll.

Would you be opposed to the idea that we are God and this is our playground? Or do you prefer a God with superiority over you?

This is mostly wrong. From FiveThirtyEight:

Obviously there were problems with prediction models that aggregate polls, some of which were giving Clinton 90+% odds. The problem there was the failure to account for the possibility that polling errors between different states would be correlated. Also clearly a 2-3% error in a persistent direction (i.e. pro-Clinton) is a problem, but it's unlikely the causes of that error have much bearing on the questions we're asking. The most likely cause of error is in the way likely voter models are constructed. See for example this analysis. Note that they state that "a number of other tests for the Shy Trump theory yielded no evidence to support it.", re: your theory about "political correctness".

In any case, none of this supports the claim that polls mean very little. I would happily concede a +/- 5 point margin of error on the data I've provided, and it would not change the conclusions I've reached.

So, to recap, I argued that your claim that belief in moral realism is "properly basic" depended on an unfounded assumption that there is broad agreement on morality, and I claimed that there are wide differences of belief on moral issues, both just in America on various issues and also across cultures. You responded with this:

The data I've provided demonstrates that your argument is incorrect, whether the number of American Catholics who believe abortion is morally permissible is 38% or 30%, or the number of Protestants who believe gay/lesbian relationships are permissible is 40% or 30%.

Also, just to restate it, a big part of my original argument was that the differences become obvious when you dig deeper into moral questions than just these top-line questions. That is, we all agree that "murder is immoral", but we don't all agree on when a killing becomes a "murder". This kind of polling data doesn't speak directly to that point but it's still important.

That part was always clear. However, when I first outlined my argument against belief in moral realism being "properly basic", we had this back and forth:

Note that I read "argue from the assertion that at least some do exist" as assuming the conclusion, i.e. assuming that moral realism is true. Which is the actual issue in this line of discussion, rather than the compatibility of moral realism and atheism. Hence my response:

In response to which you wrote:

But clearly here we are arguing about the truth of moral realism and not about the compatibility of moral realism with atheism. Hence my confusion.

TRIPLE POST: Saw this meme this morning, thought of you all :P

Philosophical skepticism also affects itself, so it's not the biggest of worries.

Properly basic doesn't depend on anything. Properly basic means you can consider it to be true without having to justify it. My conscience tells me there is a right and wrong and my life experience backs it up.

There are wide differences between people who don't believe in a God and people who do. The more homogenous and devout a group of people are, the more homogenous their moral views will be.





That data supports my argument. It's clear from, notwithstanding the problems I mentioned with polling you didn't address, that the more religious and devout people are, the more they share moral opinions that differ from non-theists.

No. Whether or not objective moral values exist, naturalism is imcompatible with moral realism. If it doesn't exist, then antirealism is true. If it does (the assumption you seem to think I'm making illegitimately) then naturalism is incompatible with it. If you want to talk about reasons to think moral realism is true, we can, but that's not the discussion we've been having.


We can argue that if you want, I'm just pointing out what my initial statement was which was that naturalism is incompatible with moral realism. So, if moral realism is false, then naturalism can be true. If moral realism is true then naturalism can't be true if they are incompatible. It makes no difference to my initial argument whether or not moral realism is true (ie: if it's not, then naturalist anti-realism is true!)