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by sudosysgen 745 days ago
> Hume's original text describing the is-ought problem is specifically targeting justification of ethics on god. Laws that no one is ought to abide by are no laws but nonsense.

> Is murder immoral because god hate murder, or do god hate murder because it is immoral?

We agree here, but that isn't how religion solves the problem. Religious laws are also enforced by threats in the afterlife and violence in the present life, not merely by reason, so they do not need to solve the is-ought problem like secular laws do. Of course, religious law has other problems.

> Many will argue that no moral theory can be logically justified, and that the search for logical justification is category error

I agree completely, hence why it is impossible to derive rights that are logically justified without an appeal to God. The comment I was replying to claimed there were logically justified rights which have to follow from logically justified moral theories unless they are decreed from beyond reason, and since the latter is a category error, so is the former.

2 comments

> We agree here, but that isn't how religion solves the problem. Religious laws are also enforced by threats in the afterlife and violence in the present life, not merely by reason, so they do not need to solve the is-ought problem like secular laws do. Of course, religious law has other problems.

You are mixing law with moral/ethics. Secular law doesn't have is-ought problem, it is enforced by the state law enforcement forces. Pressure to abide to the laws doesn't entail or justify their morality.

> I agree completely, hence why it is impossible to derive rights that are logically justified without an appeal to God. The comment I was replying to claimed there were logically justified rights which have to follow from logically justified moral theories unless they are decreed from beyond reason, and since the latter is a category error, so is the former.

It wasn't. It was arguing for inherent rights. The claim for inherent rights can be justified. It can't be justified by logic just like it cannot be proved mathematically. But it can be justified ethically using reason.

> hence why it is impossible to derive rights that are logically justified without an appeal to God

All attempts at changing human nature have failed, and it is human nature from whence rights are derived.

Parents with zero or one child believe that human nature is conferred from the parents. Those with 2+ children know that it is inherent.