Let's not spread the myth that Buddhism is any different than any other religion.

http://www.lankanewspapers.com/news/2009/4/42404_space.html

Here's the problem with any religious argument:

you can't argue a belief system against the tangible word.

God either exists or doesn't.

If it does exist, then it seems to me that as long as we follow the golden rule, we pretty much don't have to worry about worshiping god. Do unto and live and let live and all that.

John Lennon knew what he was talking about when he sang:

Imagine NO religion... I wonder if you can?

The problem with your argument is that far too many people believe that God is a muscular old man sitting in the clouds, wrapped in a toga. The old man is tempermental and could strike you donw at any minute or be a loving, benevolent ol chap. And who consults with our grandpa God and lets us know His will since he doesn't speak to us directly because he is waaaaay too mysterious to actually communicate with humanity? Religious leaders? That would mean that in most cases we may as well put used car salesmen in charge of determining moral truth!

The elusive uninversal and perfect moral truth you discuss may or may not be found. I think rational humans have to assume it will not be found and the honus is on us to arrive at an agreed upon set of laws that define the moral truth where possible and that is the best we can do.

Assuming the existence of some God, some force, the origin of all things, the creator, etc... He, it, they, whatever will reveal and take care of itself in due time. Being unconvinced at this time, we must assume that until that moment of revelation it is our responsibility to create laws and govern our behavior in all respects, particularly with respect to our conduct as moral actors in the universe. Thus, regardless and independent of "God" and perhaps even more so in the absence of said "God" our existence has great meaning insofar as it contributes to the advancement of the whole of humanity and our planet's existence in the universe. I do not see how an afterlife adds any additional meaning beyond that.

Seems to me the traditional understanding of life after death is more often than not a means of gaining compliance in the hopes of being rewarded for it by not having to go out of existence at the end of one's life. While I have no desire to go out of existence, having given extended thought to the subject I have to say that any moral yardstick that is worth following is worth following simply because it is the right thing to do. If a reward of life after death is required, I would think it almost a sure sign of a fraud posing as a ultimate moral truth.

Joe Pettit,

The argument really seems to fall apart here:

One last thought. Just because a real measure of moral truth exists does not mean that any human can know what that measure is or what it implies with absolute confidence. Rather, we must struggle and argue with and amongst ourselves regarding how best to advance moral truth. Does this place us in the same position as those who were allowed to define the length of zots? No, because in the case of zots, there was no real measure to approximate in the first place. Without a real measure of moral truth, the notion of moral error becomes meaningless.

If this posited real measure of moral truth is unknowable, then there is no rational procedure one could follow to conform to it, or even approximate it. Not only could we not have “absolute confidence” that we were conforming our actions to the real standard, we could not have any rational disputes whatsoever about whether we were conforming to the standard, or the degrees to which we were conforming to it. All of that struggling and arguing would be to no avail. If a presupposition of meaningful moral discourse, then, were the ability to engage in rational argument and deliberation over how well our characters or actions conform to the real, actualized standard of moral perfection, then meaningful moral discourse would be impossible.

If I ask you what a zot is and you tell me: “The true zot is the length of a particular diamond crystal located in a lead case in Vienna”, I could then go on to ask you whether anyone has every viewed and measured that crystal, and passed that measure onto others. You might then pull out a measuring stick and say, “Yes, and this stick was calibrated from another stick, which itself was calibrated from a third stick, which ultimately goes back to a direct measurement of that diamond in Vienna.” At that point, my confidence that I can sensibly make measurements in zots would depend on the degree of confidence I have that your chain-of-measurement story is actually true.

But suppose you tell me instead that “The true zot exists in the unknowable realm of Zothalla, a place no human being has ever really seen and that no human mind can even perceive or grasp. Thus no one has ever directly measured the true zot.” Then, by your own account, your claim that such an ultimate measure exists is epistemically worthless, and even if conceded, the posited existence of such a standard would be morally useless and irrelevant. So if you believe that meaningful morality requires an absolute standard of actualized moral perfection, against which we can measure our actions and rationally dispute about them, then you had better argue that we have at least an imperfect cognitive contact with and grasp of this standard, otherwise the whole story is philosophically inert and useless.

Personally, I don’t believe such a transcendent standard exists. Nor do I believe in some more imminent standard of actualized moral perfection. Nor do I believe that standards of moral perfection lie beyond the human scale or are external to human nature.

Human beings are a kind of animal, and like other animals they have fundamental drives and inhibitions, likes and dislikes, desires and aversions. We are also sociable and rule-making animals. We seek to influence our environment through the making and enforcement of systems of rules, just as we seek to influence it through the making of durable tools and habitations. Because we are similar to one another, we are capable of reaching some agreement with others on what we would like our environment to be like, and because we are sociable, we have natural cooperative skills and aptitudes that we use to work together to build these systems of rules, devise cooperative means by which to enforce them, and make what compromises and adjustments we must in order to sustain the coalitions with others that are necessary to make these systems of rules possible.

We don’t need to apologize for having the natural likes and dislikes, desires and aversions we were born with, or for attempting to remake the world in a manner that conforms to them. That’s life. That’s what living things do. Living organisms attempt to struggle against the natural forces that threaten them and oppose them and harm them, for as long as they can, until their lives give out. The moral codes we build are as natural as a beaver den. But unlike beavers, we have certain more advanced cognitive and technological capacities. We are all also capable of engaging in a process of self-understanding by which we come to know ourselves better, both in our individual quirks and our common human nature, and thus propose and dispute about rules that would better serve our fundamental drives and desires then the systems of rules that actually prevail.

But we don’t need a permission slip from the universe or the transcendent beyond in order to be justified in attempting to impose our wills upon the world. The residual feeling that we do need such a transcendent standard or permission slip is a by-product of ordinary patterns of social subordination, including the subordination we all experience as children. Many social patterns accustom us to habits of obedience, and to subordinating our own wills to the wills of others. We then come to recognize that the human wills with which we have direct experience are themselves subordinated to others in elaborate social systems of dominance and submission, and that human rules in local social systems are subordinate to rules made by more powerful and comprehensive systems. This may lead us to the habit of thinking that for each human will, there is a further will to which it is subordinate or that for each system of rules, there is a further system of rule from which the first derives its legitimacy. But that is a mistaken inference.

We may fall into despair and a sense of meaninglessness if we fail to achieve full intellectual and emotional maturity, and continue of childlike habits of looking for permission for everything, and finding something to subordinate ourselves to, beyond the level where that kind of quest makes sense. If I am accustomed to feeling that my only purpose in living can be a purpose assigned to me by something else, for the ends devised by that something else, but are at the same time convinced intellectually that no other human being can be more justified in assigning a purpose to my life than I am myself; and if at the same time I am accustomed to disregarding the inquiry into my own fundamental drives and desires, then I might then get intellectually and emotionally stuck with a feeling of purposelessness and meaninglessness until I achieve full adulthood and start accepting the legitimacy of my own ultimate purposes, and acting on them with confidence and a clear conscience.

Moral discourse based on this naturalistic understanding of human life is not solipsistic, because we have good reason to believe that we are similar to many others in our fundamental human needs and preferences, and that we have a rational basis for our disputes. And rule-making is a cooperative, social activity, not an introspective one. I can’t achieve even some substantial part of my own desires unless I am willing to compromise and work with others on collaborative projects. Also the desires and drives we act on include the desire to protect and nurture those to whom we are tied by bonds of love.

Morality and God are not mutually inclusive. You can have one without the other. Ethics exists as a separate branch of philosophy from metaphysics, and may it also remain so.

In facy (unfortunately) dogma can impede moral growth by creating a "church of potato" that can answer all your questions without any critical insight or empathy on your own. This can lead to bad decisions based on an outdated one-size-fits-all moral black hole that can swallow entire nations (see humanitas vitae).

How does slapping a label, 'god', onto otherwise meaningless morality make it meaningful (other than the meaningfulness of memes and illusions)?

If you start with heuristics instead of errantly assumed absolutes, things fall into place very nicely.

So, if the truth (the existance or nonexistance of god) does not suit us, we are to ignore it?

That is the worst kind of morality.

So, in other words, in terms of morality, you think God is the "Supreme Ruler"! BAHAHAHAHAHA! Get it? Supreme Ruler. As in the ultimate measuring device?
But seriously folks...

Good post Joe. I asked the question yesterday in my own post "Can we agree on what is a good person?"

I think maybe we should put all the philosphical conversations aside and roll up our sleeves and try to define the behaviors that we all agree are "good". Maybe from there we can make progress.

The problem with absolute truth is that unless we can form some uber or collective consciousness everything is person specific relativism.

But maybe, just maybe, there is enough of "us" that share a truth to make it a reality.

One cannot criticize religious dogmatism for long without encountering the following claim, advanced as though it were a self-evident fact of nature: there is no secular basis for morality. Raping and killing children can only really be wrong, the thinking goes, if there is a God who says it is. Otherwise, right and wrong would be mere matters of social construction, and any society would be at liberty to decide that raping and killing children is actually a wholesome form of family fun. In the absence of God, John Wayne Gacy could be a better person than Albert Schweitzer, if only more people agreed with him.

It is simply amazing how widespread this fear of secular moral chaos is, given how many misconceptions about morality and human nature are required to set it whirling in a person’s brain. There is undoubtedly much to be said against the spurious linkage between faith and morality, but the following three points should suffice.

1. If a book like the Bible were the only reliable blueprint for human decency that we had, it would be impossible (both practically and logically) to criticize it in moral terms. But it is extraordinarily easy to criticize the morality one finds in the Bible, as most of it is simply odious and incompatible with a civil society.

The notion that the Bible is a perfect guide to morality is really quite amazing, given the contents of the book. Human sacrifice, genocide, slaveholding, and misogyny are consistently celebrated. Of course, God’s counsel to parents is refreshingly straightforward: whenever children get out of line, we should beat them with a rod (Proverbs 13:24, 20:30, and 23:13–14). If they are shameless enough to talk back to us, we should kill them (Exodus 21:15, Leviticus 20:9, Deuteronomy 21:18–21, Mark 7:9–13, and Matthew 15:4–7). We must also stone people to death for heresy, adultery, homosexuality, working on the Sabbath, worshiping graven images, practicing sorcery, and a wide variety of other imaginary crimes.

Most Christians imagine that Jesus did away with all this barbarism and delivered a doctrine of pure love and toleration. He didn’t. (See Matthew 5:18–19, Luke 16:17, 2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Peter 20–21, John 7:19.) Anyone who believes that Jesus only taught the Golden Rule and love of one’s neighbor should go back and read the New Testament. And he or she should pay particular attention to the morality that will be on display if Jesus ever returns to earth trailing clouds of glory (e.g., 2 Thessalonians 1:7–9, 2:8; Hebrews 10:28–29; 2 Peter 3:7; and all of Revelation).

It is not an accident that St. Thomas Aquinas thought heretics should be killed and that St. Augustine thought they should be tortured. (Ask yourself, what are the chances that these good doctors of the Church hadn’t read the New Testament closely enough to discover the error of their ways?) As a source of objective morality, the Bible is one of the worst books we have. It might be the very worst, in fact—if we didn’t also happen to have the Qur’an.

It is important to point out that we decide what is good in the Good Book. We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses; we read that a woman found not to be a virgin on her wedding night should be stoned to death, and we (if we are civilized) decide that this is the most vile lunacy imaginable. Our own ethical intuitions are, therefore, primary. So the choice before us is simple: we can either have a twenty-first-century conversation about ethics—availing ourselves of all the arguments and scientific insights that have accumulated in the last two thousand years of human discourse—or we can confine ourselves to a first-century conversation as it is preserved in the Bible.

2. If religion were necessary for morality, there should be some evidence that atheists are less moral than believers....

Read More from Sam Harris secularhumanism.org

As regards your point regarding the Euthyphro dilemma, I don’t really see the solution you sketch. I guess your point about meaninglessness is that the reasoning goes as follows
1. Why should I do this (eg. help someone in distress)?
2. Because it is the good/right thing to do!
3. Why should I do the good/right thing?
4. Atheist: …. I have nothing more to say

Whereas a theist will say
4’. Because God commands it/Because it is in accordance with God’s Will

My point is that this just pushes us to the further question
5’. Why should I do what God commands?
6’. Theist. Because God wills what is good.

Which seems to get us into a vicious circle going back to 3. (Unless of course you bring in hellfire and brimstone).

There is little explanatory value in the appeal to God and his/her will. Either it is a conceptual identity, or we have some reason to believe God is Good. I don’t think we can have the latter without an infinite regress and the former doesn’t get us any more meaning into moral judgments. Maybe I’m framing this wrong, though…

As for this

“the good is relative to the future; in human terms, the good is always a measure of the best possible immediate future state of affairs.”

- I don’t think that is true. That is one – consequentialist – view of goodness. I personally don’t work that way. I have sometimes told the truth to people despite the net evil consequences, simply because I value truth. Some things are worth doing not because they make the world a better place (eg. thinking about philosophical questions). I find such things worth doing when I do them, I find them to be meaningful activities, but I don’t do them with a view to the ‘the best possible immediate future state of affairs’. I find this to be an unhelpfully restrictive sense of goodness or meaningfulness in doing what we do.

Don’t worry about your blog falling off the TPMC page, your responses pop up on people’s dashboard, and conversations can go on for a while after the first couple of days.